Emerging Technologies / Emergent Worlds: why the social sciences need to work in digital futures
Why investigate emerging technologies? In this talk I will suggest that researching emerging technologies and the possible environmental, social and other species futures that they might participate in, offers a crucial prism towards considering how hopeful and trusted futures could come about. In doing so, I propose a critical, engaged and interdisciplinary social science, which seeks to enact new modes of preemption and intervention. In doing so I will draw on recent research from the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, such as city data sensing, robotics in the construction industry, smart home tech and future automated mobilites.
Sarah Pink (PhD, FASSA) is Professor and founding Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, and is currently the Simon Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology in Manchester University. She is also Associate Director of Monash University Energy Institute, and a CI in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society. Sarah is a design and futures anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. Her most recent publications include the books Emerging technologies / life at the edge of the future (2023), Design Ethnography (2022) and Everyday Automation (2022), and documentary films Smart Homes for Seniors (2021) and Digital Energy Futures (2022). She is currently making a new film about Air Futures.