AbstractsAnthropology

Techno-Utopia/ Techno-Dystopia: Writing the Future of Cyber-Technology

by Brian Schram




Institution: University of Waterloo
Department:
Year: 2015
Keywords: Cyber-cultures, Virtual Reality, Online Mythology, Cyborg Anthropology
Record ID: 2061012
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/10012/9058


Abstract

Will cyberspace ever become truly inhabitable, and if so, what kind of political climate will be present there? By investigating emergent discourses surrounding the future of cyber-technology, I reveal how online users are actively engaged in the preemptive literary construction and interpretation of a not yet realized cosmopolitics of virtual spaces. Additionally, I argue that futurism online constitutes the emergence of a novel form of real-time genre fiction intertextually linked to more conventional forms of science fiction that interpenetrate both public and academic discourses and interpret cyberspace as a potential source of either boundless freedom or dystopia.