2022-10-30

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

#thesis

• Imaginary crisis

  • dominant narratives
  • individualistic cultures (prompted by survival mode)

• Why can’t we fully maximize innovation? Limited narratives

  • Cards/Digital colonialism: the dominance of foreign players and foreign ICT– and therefore foreign values, perspectives, and ideas– resembles colonial structures
  • E.G. Dominant narratives
  • Alongside other issues like digital divide (in terms of both access and capability)

• Provide Context of main research question

  • Catalyze - disrupt the status quo
  • Collective imagination
  • Equitable technological futures: where technology benefits all, not just a select few

Specifically, technology production, promotion, and export are based on the idea that progress through technology is vital for the advancement of societies. This paradigm has been central to modernization theory and has promoted the export of Western interpretations of certain values through value-laden technology (Heesen 2004)

https://www.cigionline.org/big-tech/the-entrenched-colonialism-of-tech/

• Context: Imaginary crisis is limiting technological innovation
• Gap:
  • little knowledge on how Filipinos perceive technology in the first place
  • lack of science fiction, lack of futurism (despite being a marginalized people)
  • lacking visions of our futures (if we do, these are dominated by people in power)
  • lack of awareness of colonialism?

OR

• Intellectual Status quo: dominant narratives surrounding technology
• Challenge: digital colonialism
• Thesis: in order to build better technological futures, we first need to be able to imagine them

Why should Filipinos (or anyone for that matter) read and write Science Fiction? With the publication of Fausto J. Galauran’s Doktor Kuba in 1933, the Philippines actually has the oldest written Science Fiction tradition in Southeast Asia. Despite an early start, the country has had comparatively few serious Science Fiction works in any medium. This is problematic as nothing shapes the vision for a country’s future like Science Fiction does. As historian Yuval Noah Harari has said: “Today science fiction is the most important artistic genre. “It shapes the understanding of the public on things which are likely to change our lives and society more than anything else in the coming decades.”

As scholar Dominic Cimafranca observes, Philippine science fiction may not be as popular as fantasy and horror because of the predilection of Philippine writers to highlight internal characteristics, such as those found in stories of the magical and the fantastic, as opposed to external forces, such as those found in stories about technological and scientific advances. However, Philippine science fiction is an important genre to cultivate because it imagines and shapes a future – a future that, hopefully, improves on our present conditions.

For a nation to progress, to move forward, it is first necessary to dream about where it can go (as well as the scenarios it needs to avoid). Science Fiction is fertile ground for this type of thinking and this is why it’s important for every nation to create its own body of suppositional fiction.

This is particularly true for post-colonial developing nations like the Philippines. The bulk of Science Fiction comes from the United States, the UK and Japan (the latter primarily for anime and its derivatives). ==The outlook and point-of-view of such culturally dominant narratives is imposed on the rest of the world simply because it’s the only one readily available in the market.==

The Philippines (and by extension the rest of the world) needs its writers to add their voices to what should be a multi-ethnic, multi-perspective chorus. Never mind that the international market prefers “western-style SF” at this time. Never mind that very few Filipino writers can write without any vestige of western colonialism. The country needs more stories to define the future it wants and deserves.

“…The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers — it’s that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.” It’s about dreaming the future. In fact it’s time for the Filipino to dream a multiplicity of futures. ==It’s time to figure out where we want to go as a nation (because you really wouldn’t want the politicians and/or showbiz personalities to do it for you).== It’s time to create our Science Fiction.

Works commissioned by the Exploration and Future Sensing team of Omidyar Network, a social change venture investing in the creation of more inclusive and equitable societies. One of them is Portals to Beautiful Futures, their Trends to Watch report for 2021. Instead of settling for a list of trends, they partnered with the Guild of Future Architects to reimagine the report as a multifaceted series of provocations.

Criteria must be also set for the materials that will be included in the database. First, included materials must be a criticism of technology and/or cover technology through the lens of the humanities and social sciences. Next, they must also be considered long-form, whether they come in written or video content (a minimum of 1,200 words or 30 minutes). Then, they must be published by institutions like universities, nonprofits, and publications; exceptions will be made for independently published materials, like personal blog posts, if the author is considered established in their field of study (through education and work experience). Finally, these must also be in the English language, due to the personal limitations of the researcher. Materials will be collected through mainly online methods, such as personal research and crowdsourcing on social media.

The researcher also acknowledges that the study may be skewed in terms of education and social class due to the existence of a digital divide: people who have access to technology and can fully leverage it are more likely to come from privileged backgrounds.

   The more creative our imaginations are, the more capable we are of achieving better futures: ones where technology is made for us, not against us. Before we can push for better innovation, we must be able to criticize the current state of the technologies that surround us,

Thus, in order to make equitable technological development the standard, critical perspectives on technology must be made accessible to all. Technologists are capable of this; given that they already make the act of consumption easier and more efficient for us (e.g. one-click buying and personalization algorithms), surely it’d be possible to do the same for the act of learning  — a.k.a. consuming knowledge — as well.

• Designing with intention can be done by developing and following evaluation criteria, guidelines, standards, codes, and laws.
• Future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology: Multiple, contested, commodified:
  • Weave into the introduction na lang
  • Cards/Imaginaries are collectively held and institutionally stabilized
  • Nonetheless, they are multiple, contested and commodified rather than monolithic, linear visions of future trajectories enacted by state actors.
  • Imaginaries are increasingly dominated by technology companies who not only take over the imaginative power of shaping future society.
  • They also partly absorb public institutions’ ability to govern these very futures with their rhetoric, technologies and business models.
  • Transition: exploring technological imaginaries made by people, whether they are users or builders