The cultural theorist and media designer Anne Balsamo calls for transforming learning practices to inspire culturally attuned technological imaginations.

This volume, Futurism and the Technological Imagination, results from a conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas in Helsinki. It contains a number of re-written conference contributions as well as several specially commissioned essays that address various aspects of the Futurists’ relationship to technology both on an ideological level and with regard to their artistic languages. In the early twentieth century, many art movements vied with each other to overhaul the aesthetic and ideological foundations of arts and literature and to make them suitable vehicles of expression in the new Era of the Machine. Some of the most remarkable examples came from the Futurist movement, founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. By addressing the full spectrum of Futurist attitudes to science and the machine world, this collection of 14 essays offers a multifaceted account of the complex and often contradictory features of the Futurist technological imagination. The volume will appeal to anybody interested in the history of modern culture, art and literature.

The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These "technological futurisms" have arisen from significant advances in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology and are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophical and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long historical tradition of technological dreaming. Michael Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett’s argument arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based around the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann. Throughout, the author highlights points of correspondence and divergence between technological futurisms and the Judeo-Christian understanding of the future.

This open access book addresses the pressing need for sustainability in urban development and the use of technology, with cities to serve as the main stage for strategies that seek to meet the targets and the cross-sector priorities indicated in the EU’s Next Generation program, all in pursuit of a solid recovery on the part of the European economy, along lines of ecological transition, digitalization, competitiveness, training, and inclusion to overcome social, territorial, and gender differences. The international study encounter is meant to promote visions shared by architectural technology and other disciplines, which, though they may appear to differ, are closely interconnected, with the aim of achieving an open, interdisciplinary integration capable of proposing concrete projects regarding topics held to be of strategic importance to the future of the built environment. These are identified to draw up evolving scenarios of architecture and cities suited to reflection, at various levels, on innovative models of process and product.

This book explores the origin and future of "upgrade culture," a collection of cultural habits and orientations based on the assumption that new technologies will rapidly, perpetually, and inevitably emerge. By analyzing discourses of technological change and the practices of marketing workers inside the consumer technology industry between the early 1980s and the late 2010s, the book describes the genesis, maintenance, and future of upgrade culture. Based on archival and popular sources, first-hand interviews with a range of industry professionals, and participant observations at industry-only events, the book attends to issues both intimate to the culture of marketing work and structural to the organization of the consumer technology industry. This book will have a broad appeal to social/cultural theorists of technology, marketing, and consumerism, as well as to scholars in business history, communication, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, and anthropology. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003193869-1/introduction-adam-richard-rottinghaus?context=ubx&refId=1bb75408-b5c2-4a69-bd20-082a73a77920

The increasing role and power of artificial intelligence in our lives and world requires us to imagine and shape a desirable future with this technology. Since visions of AI often draw from Christian apocalyptic narratives, current discussions about technological hopes and fears present an opportunity for a deeper engagement with Christian eschatological resources. This book argues that the Christian apocalyptic imagination can transform how we think about and use AI, helping us discover ways artificial agency may participate in new creation.