With this paper, we suggest a new ethical and conceptual framework for how to enter into companionships with digital technologies and digital creations in an increasingly media dominated society. We argue that such a framework is needed, as recent developments within digital technologies have sparked cultural anxieties concerning the agency and liveliness of such technologies to the extent of creating popular imaginaries of “technologies-as-monsters” (Suchman 2018). Examples of such imaginaries of monstrous technologies can be found within contemporary popular culture, but the ties between the monster and technological developments have a much longer history and have been explored within literature and art for centuries, the most notable example being Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus (1818/2003). Using discourse and textual analysis, as well as Monster Studies and Feminist Posthumanism, we investigate the legacy of the cultural and scientific imaginary of technologies-as-monsters, and the role played by media in transporting these imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015). We offer an analysis of contemporary science fiction narratives across media – such as TV, film and novels – and discuss how they influence imaginaries of the technologies of the future. We also propose new methods based on creative writing for rethinking and retelling stories of future co-existence and companionship with techno-monsters. 

References

Jasanoff, Sheila (2015) “Future imperfect: Science, Technology, and the Imaginations of Modernity”, pp. 1-34 in Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim (eds.) Dreamscapes of Modernity. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shelley, Mary (1818/2003) Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin.

Suchman, Lucy (2018) “Frankenstein’s Problem”, pp. 13-18 in Ulrike Schultze, Margunn Aanestad, Magnus Mähring, Carsten Østerlund and Kai Riemer (eds.) Living with Monsters? Social Implications of Algorithmic Phenomena, Hybrid Agency, and the Performativity of Technology. Cham: Springer.