The futures of futures studies
Pushing the boundaries of futures thinking
25 October 2023 (Wednesday), 05:30-06:00, ONLINE

Embracing the 'Weird': The Technology Culturalist Approach as a Liminal Space for Fostering Posthumanist Futures

This paper evokes the “”weird research manifesto,”” a framework that disrupts conventional disciplinary methods to examine the question: What would the Futures look like if humans were not the center of attention? Embracing Weird Research gives license to tackle the difficult and subversive questions in the liminal space between the conventual practices and new approaches.

The essay underlines the need to shift away from a human-centered paradigm ingrained into the current ethical, philosophical, and practical approaches toward acceptance of the entanglements of agencies’ human essence with technology that merges with pasts, presents, and futures into the building blocks of new futures.

The idea of “”Technology Culturalism”” was born out of Philosophical Posthumanism. This idea acknowledges technology as a trait of being human, unsettling the usual narrative on technology and the possible Futures (Ferrando 2019). By incorporating Technology Culturalism and Posthumanism through weird research, we create liminal spaces as locations of radical change to alter conventional narratives in foresight and future studies, shifting from anthropocentric perspectives towards a more complete vision of what’s to come.

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