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Palgrave Macmillan

Media Futures

Theory and Aesthetics

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Christoph Ernst

    1. Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany

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  2. Jens Schröter

    1. Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany

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  • Examines the imagination of media futures
  • Considers emerging technologies
  • Maps theories concerning media futures

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Introduction

    • Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter
    Pages 1-6

  3. Media Change as a Cultural Phenomenon

    • Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter
    Pages 7-28

  4. Imagination and Future Media

    • Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter
    Pages 29-73

  5. Futures of Digital Media

    • Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter
    Pages 75-102

  6. Future Media: Radical Imagination and “Immutable Futures”

    • Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter
    Pages 103-110

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 111-119
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Keywords

About this book

This book deals with the connection between media and the future. It is about the imagination of futuristic media and what this says about the present, but it also shows how media are imagined as means to control the future. The book begins by describing different theories of the evolution of media and by exploring how this evolution is tied to expectations regarding the future. The authors discuss the theories of imagination and how the imagination of media futures operates. To do so, they analyse four concrete examples: the imaginations once related to interactive television and how they were performed in an important piece of media art; those on “ubiquitous computing,” which remain present today; those on three-dimensional, especially holographic, displays that are prevalent everywhere in cinema, and lastly the contemporary imaginations on quantum computing and how they have been enacted in science fiction. The book appeals to readers interested in the question of how our present imagines its technological futures.

Reviews

“At a moment of rampant futurology and technophilia in response to pandemic crisis, Media Futures is necessary reading. Innovatively rethinking the relationship between "new" and "future", the book makes a necessary and important intervention into how we study (and imagine) media change. Schröter and Ernst vividly demonstrate the way discourses of “new media” foreclose alternative media systems and futures by substituting consumption, versioning, and planned obsolescence in the present, for emergence, change, and difference in the future. Against this tendency to destroy the future in the name of a speculative present, they offer vivid, articulate, and clearly actionable alternative models for creating different imaginaries of media and time for the future.”

-          Dr. Orit Halpern, Associate Professor, Concordia University, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  • Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter

About the authors

Christoph Ernst is Associate Professor for Media Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. His main research interests are information visualization, interface studies, media theory, and future studies.

Jens Schröter is Chair for Media Studies at the University of Bonn. His main research interests are digital media, future studies, and critical media studies.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Media Futures

  • Book Subtitle: Theory and Aesthetics

  • Authors: Christoph Ernst, Jens Schröter

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80488-6

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-80487-9Published: 01 November 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-80490-9Published: 01 November 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-80488-6Published: 30 October 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 119

  • Number of Illustrations: 9 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Digital/New Media, Media Studies

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