Contreras Alcántara JavierMartínez Pérez LilianaFutures-present at Stake: Species, Interactions and Community at Technological Frontiers
En-claves del pensamiento
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, División de Humanidades y Ciencias SocialesThe futures-present of be human, as made possible by digital technologies, artificial intelligence, gene editing and astronomic and space exploration technologies, put a strain on the human condition at both a physical and at a psychological level, as well as in connection with evolutionary, biological and ecological assumptions and with the social, political and cosmological coordinates. Our work sets out to explore the circumstances of the emergency and the deployment of a new game between technology, science, economy and politics, the specific qualities of future technologies to articulate the processes of invention, innovation and promise, as well as to reconnoiter the limits or thresholds in dispute, such as those connected with the human being and species, virtual realities, scientific dramatizations and technopolitics. The final goal is to articulate a foresight, in a pre-vision way, of some of the potential transformations, impacts and modelings of anthropo-synthetic realities in the political and social realms. For contemporary social sciences, the existence of fractioned timeframes, in correspondence with the plurality and asymmetries of political and social communities, implies a challenge to investigate, experiment and understand the expectations, tensions, bets and interactions that revolve around the realms of the technological frontiers and the orientation of futures.
Keywords:
Currently, rehearsals and 'simulations' are being carried, through technological invention and innovation, that attempt to reground the (anthropological, psychological and biological) limits of what it means to be human, the foundations of social links, the possibilities of politics and the continuation of life on Earth. The future is experimented with and reinvented; in contrast and simultaneously, the present appears not to have fully happened.
This present future makes no history, nor does it transform societies in the ways that have been imagined and experimented with, but it does reconfigure a series of conceptualizations: personality and subjectivity (avatar/characters), the notion of reality (immersion/presence), the ways in which people establish links with others [
Technological inventions and innovations have been part of the social and political transformations of human evolution; nevertheless, the effects of some of the current technological developments seem to impose a radical mutation in the species'
In this sense, we endeavor to examine the emergency circumstances and the deployment, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, of a
One of the outstanding features of the technological transformations triggered by the invention of the personal computer in the 1970s has been the formation of a unique spatial crossroads [
An example that illustrates the region's force of attraction is what happened in connection with the technology for producing computer graphics, the first steps of which were linked with the technology currently used to produce a sensation of immersion in
The Xerox PARC case also provides an example of the intense relation that these technological transformations generated between the studies and experiments carried out in the realms of science and information technologies, and applications in the digital industry. Something similar began happening with the research and initial bets regarding future technologies linked in principle to mathematics, logic and science philosophy, as well as the various psychological and ethical explorations concerning intelligence and the human mind. These theoretical-analytical approaches were displaced in the 1960s by a scientific orientation centered around the resolution of technological and biomedical problems, something which transformed computer engineering and programming into fields of substantive knowledge of disciplines such as information technologies, data science, bio-engineering, and astrophysics, among others, with the main goal of deriving innovation from invention.
As Lécuyer has postulated, this form of innovation emphasizes 'the creative process that goes from invention to development, marketing and deployment of new technologies [...which] lies at the heart of corporate strategy and public policy. It generates colossal financial investments and is carried out by an ever-increasing number of engineers and scientists,'
Thus, the practice of creation/invention shared through collectives of scientists devoted to technical experimentation, as well as of groups of people who worked on this in a playful way, were transformed into professional, industrial and economic activities. These regroundings, opened by the
Due to the high degree of ability required and a clear need for motivation among workers, an entrepreneurial culture open to organizational experimentation would become another key component of the new game. Because of this, firms implemented plans linking workers to their companies, allowing them to participate both in the process of decision-making and in connection with economic results, turning them into shareholders with the capacity to buy and sell shares and to benefit from profits.
Additionally, the deployment of investment and risk models known as venture capital (a term that derived from
Additionally, the development and articulation of the new sense of region, world and Californian space would be replicated in global cities and similar industrial complexes, which both compete against one another while connecting to one another: among other parts in the world, Shenzhen in Southern China, or Bangalore in India. Thus, California's West Coast not only redraws the geography of power within the United States of America and feeds the 1980s neoliberal ideology, but it configures a new constellation of global forces that determine a wide range of things, from space exploration to everyday spaces.
This complex economy generated by future technological bets currently requires both the exploitation of raw materials—such as the rare minerals that encourage mining on Earth and the space colonization race of the extraterrestrial bodies closest to us (the Moon, Mars)—and large investments in manufacturing sectors, in order to develop the telecommunications infrastructure (5G), produce computer parts and components and (both traditional and quantum) digital servers.
To sum up, the new game kicks off an environment of regrounding and reframing of experimentation, risk and scientific-entrepreneurial corporatization that would determine the mutation of scales, time frames and the connections of singular historical transformations (historicity), bringing under stress—if not questioning—conceptual modes and materials that had been valid until then, as well as society's technology-based futures.
Contemporaneity has so densified the present time that it has turned into a gravitational hyper field or gigantic black hole, from which the past is observed and the future imagined. Past time does not die, but is constantly made present through commemoration and memorialization; meanwhile, the future is no longer conceived as progress or something to come, but represented as
The temporal disruption of contemporary society questions the geological metaphor of time layers as a comprehensive analogy of temporalization coming out of the present, given the deliberate anachronism of this time, which recycles past chronotopes again and again, while transposing, transgressing and creating new versions of the limits of what is real to produce present futures and asynchronous and unreal universes and planes.
In this sense, Moebius' (1858) ribbon and Klein's (1882) surface, both mathematical inventions used in topology and in theoretical astrophysics for the purpose of hypothesizing—among other things—the structures of black holes, provide a key, an image and a promissory metaphor for the exploration of temporalization in current societies, by proposing a non-orientable surface, which is at once: up, down, inside, outside, before, behind— that allows to understand the simultaneity of that which is unique and that which is repeated, of that which is non-coetanus, and of what is unreal and significantly emphasized in contemporary futures.
From this perspective, the future is imagined and narrated through assemblages and designs that transmute lived experiences into experimentations and versions of what is possible and what is contingent from the present. Meanwhile, predictability, as prognostication, is anchored to repetition and to past experiences and is therefore unable to consider the unknown, that which has not yet been experienced. The asymmetry contained in this temporal elaboration, a closed past and an open future, makes the present the key chronotope in the process of deciding, risking and experimenting, turning it into the nucleus that attracts what is past and what is possible.
At an anthropological scale, our conceptualization of the future overtakes accepted intuitive meanings: 'to be a projection, a future hard materiality or a present that is yet to be in the chronological line', and incorporates operatively the notion of futurity, understanding it as 'the inexhaustible ability to produce that which is possible, the fragile interstice, the virtuality of happenings, the very possibility that there may be something instead of nothing'.
In this sense, then, future technologies created by human beings make significant apertures possible inasmuch as they densify and accelerate the present time and propitiate familiarity with potential scenarios of individual and collective life on Earth and outside of it, renew the sense of future temporalization as one that is inaugural and borderline, rather than progressive or circular, a time for invention and creation that braids (temporal curl) and infinitely potentiates faculties and capacities, as well as risks and challenges, at scales and realities yet to be explored.
On the other hand, we assume that technologies generally include both technical elements as forms of knowledge, abilities, diagrams, graphics, calculations and energy; that is, they assume a series of relationships and connections between devices, physical and mental abilities, desires and interests, concepts and information.
Specifically, computer technologies put together devices that join knowledge and abilities in the realm of information technologies with mechanical and analogical knowledge and practices. Thus, these devices are not constituted only through technical materiality [hardware]—electronic circuits, memory cards for the storage of data (audio, image, text), servers, networks—but require programming [software]—algorithms, interfaces, programs, applications—, a code allowing for manipulation, processing and calculation of data and a link to the digital world. This duality imposes a permanent relationship between creativity and applicability, thus systematically revolutionizing devices and execution, operation and connection programs. Nevertheless, the relation between their materiality and their immateriality is asymmetrical given the possibility of autonomy of their programs and algorithms, which reduces materiality to the role of being an interchangeable support that can be discarded.
These technologies, especially those called applications [Apps] bring together materiality with knowledge and ability of users in an immersive (to be connected, online) and extractive (data mining) way. The algorithms sustaining the use of applications grow autonomous and more complex through intense human use. For example, text processors, in contrast with typewriters,
Nevertheless, the computer technological bet with the largest scope is in areas of study that not only put together codes and devices successfully, but invoke promises, futurize new realities and social relationships. In this sense, we underline three technological frontiers of the present future: Artificial Intelligence (IA), gene editing, and astronomical and extraterrestrial exploration and colonization technologies.
Artificial Intelligence, having been developed over several decades, evidences its futuristic bet through its various attempts at defining its goals and expectations. An operative current has proposed defining it with regard to the processing capacities of devices and computers: in 1955, according to John McCarthy, the goal of AI was 'developing machines that behave as though they were intelligent',
Another work branch of AI, more oriented to human activities, established a futuristic horizon. In 1983, Elaine Rich proposed what may be the most potent definition of AI: 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the study of how to make computers do things in which, at the moment, people are better'.
The opening of AI studies to everyday world problems has brought about a profound interrelation with advances in cognitive sciences, mostly neuroscience and psychology, as well as information technology science, algorithms and big data processing. In particular, advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) in computers gave rise to the implementation of 'chatterbots'
Also, design, experimentation and development of increasingly sophisticated computer programs [
Additionally, the broadening of AI's goals from automated modeling and analysis of big data to robotic imitation of complex human processes and behaviors (visual and aural perception, natural written and oral language, acoustics, composition and musical interpretation, sensory detection and expression through gestures) has generated the build-up of new knowledge, sustained by exploration, observation and interpretation of human usage, interactions and expectations in connection with devices, interfaces and non-human entities with human attributes (logical thought, natural dialogue language, perception and speech), capable of carrying out specialized diagnosis tasks in the realm of health, or act as help for sick and elderly persons, as well as taking on high-risk activities and activities that are impossible for human beings to carry out.
On the other hand, gene-editing technology, which got its start with the 1953 discovery of the double helix molecular structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) by British scientists Rosalind E. Franklin, Francis H. C. Crick, Maurice H. F. Wilkins and the American scientist James D. Watson at the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge, United Kingdom)—for which the latter three received the 1962 Medicine Nobel Prize, Franklin having died in 1958 with no prizes being awarded posthumously—, as well as that of the Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) biological molecule in 1961 by various biologists and doctors, produced a bio-technological revolution with the discovery and implementation of 'gene scissors' (CRISPR-CAS9) by Biochemists Jennifer A. Doudna (University of California, USA) and Emmanuelle Charpentier (Max Planck Unit for Pathogen Sciences, Germany), who obtained the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for this innovation. Beginning in 2012, the date on which they published the results of their research, a wave of experiments has swept the world around the genetic modification of plants and animals, with their consequent impact on ecosystems, as well as on the treatment and elimination of human chronic and/or degenerative diseases.
Specifically, gene editing has opened strong expectations regarding the possibility that technology offers for the editing of human embryos, which implies the possibility of modifying hereditary patterns and evolutionary processes. Implementation of this technique by an international team of biochemists and doctors led by Dr. He Jiankui (Southern University for Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China) led to the birth of three human female—two of them twins—whose DNA was edited to make them immune to the HIV virus, as well as to smallpox and cholera. When the experiment became published in late 2018, it caused a great commotion among the scientific community and the governments of the countries involved, who demanded a global moratorium in connection with use of the CRISP-CAS9 technology. Dr. He was condemned to three years in jail; nevertheless, the existence of three genetically modified girls has become a pole of attraction for scientists interested in studying the biochemical and evolutionary effects of the technology.
Lastly, astronomical and extraterrestrial exploration and colonization technologies, the initial moment of which predates by some hundreds of years the technologies commented above through invention and deployment of terrestrial telescopes, as well as the study of meteorites, have experienced an unprecedented boom and acceleration in recent decades, through the sending of telescopes into space, the construction of the International Space Station (MIR, 1986; EEI, 1998), the deployment of mid-range satellites in the Earth's orbit, voyages by human beings into outer space and the installation of robots in near celestial bodies (the Moon, Mars, asteroids).
The main achievements made possible through the use of technological astronomical devices are the observation and transmission of data (telecommunication) from sidereal distances; this requires the building and use of high-precision sensors and of robots with certain margins of operating autonomy—which are exposed to extreme environmental conditions and unknown physical surfaces—, as well as the capacity to detect and collect samples of minerals and extra-terrestrial life.
Exploration of the nearby universe, in turn, has not only made it possible to contrast and create new conjectures concerning astrophysical laws, the capacity to deploy a complex planetary coordination—as in the case of the observation, measurement and preparation of the
These technologies have also made the development of applications in the health sector possible, as well as in the realms of treatment of ecosystems and telecommunications. In particular, the deployment of information technology and robotics made by these technologies has derived in experimentation favoring cyborgization, as well as the development of virtual reality. Reception and perception as sensory operations are being widely futurized in the digital and virtual realms, as is the expansion (augmentation) of the human body's capacities, thus opening new horizons in the realm of social links of work, consumption and entertainment.
A most important future plan related to these space technologies is the terraforming of Mars; that is, its conversion into an inhabitable planet. Its potentiality stems from economic, but also from social and political reasons, inasmuch as this would change terrestrial norms and life experiences.
The human being's frontiers as defined by Artificial Intelligence, gene editing and the space observation and exploration technologies have an impact on both the self and the other, on their
The self lives in multiple realities linked by leaps that are not mere role switches, but rather imply it in textures, incorporations and immersions that recreate the very meaning of the here-now (indexicality) and transform
The other is mediatized by devices—applications, platforms, robots—based on AI-processed big data which, in turn, transform the ways of carrying out research, thinking, imagining and social interaction.
Natural evolutionary equipment in turn enters the maelstrom of the present of bioengineering, gene manipulation, bio hackers, chip implantation in both the brain and other parts of the body [
Cosmological re-scaling, by way of the new space enterprises, runs the gamut from extraterrestrial tourism to planet colonization, mostly for extractive purposes, as well as the search for life forms, even if merely microscopic. This increases both terrestrial solitude before an inhospitable cosmos, and the technological race, as well as the struggle for new political frameworks that anticipate, control and organize the exploration, colonization and exploitation of these resources and services.
We will now explore some of the present future alternate frontiers that have an impact on the being, the human condition and on non-human devices and entities, the technological challenges and the social implications of virtual realities, the web of fictional scientific narratives recreating futuristic-technological promises, as well as the technological transformations in politics and in the political.
The future frontiers associated with digital technologies and AI stress the human condition, both in terms of its concept of corporeality and psyche and of its evolutionary biological and ecological assumptions.
Orientation in space and time based on the human body depends on the system of binary orientation coordinates in reference to its location: left/right, up/down, before/behind. In the orthogonal dimension, the body is the pivot that in a cartographic plane represents the center as relating to left/right and the place as relating to up/down, while from the space-time perspective, it incorporates the here-now in the before and after dimension. This system is made more complex by the erect position and the bipedal mobility of the human body, which releases face and hand while walking, making other relations (gesture and speech) possible. Sight becomes the orientation instrument that move away the human body from perceptive immediacy, allowing it to deal with distances on both the horizontal and the vertical planes—the heavens, the stars and the Earth. One last distinction occurs between the body's centrifugal situation and its centripetal position in connection with other bodies.
These combinations of scenarios that configure what is human are questioned by developments in future technologies, inasmuch as they transform the position of human in the play of the world. Involvement with and distancing from the world, mediatized by a new generation of (
The body is medialized, expanding—while it stumbles, like Ephestos, the Greek god of smelting and fire—
On the other hand, just as this constant experimentation disputes the notion, modes and contents of personalities and the social links they implicate, other senses of these extensions become prosthetics that rehabilitate capacities lost by human beings, reconstituting the
Lastly, the relation of human beings with robots or intelligent machines transcends the transmutations provoked from corporeity and expands the societal link with the immaterial and inanimate world, while intensifying the processes of competition, displacement and future of humanity. Thus, while it enables relationships of collaboration and the expansion of knowledge of the dynamic patterns in several areas of work and everyday life, it demands the acquisition of new knowledge and processes of social adaptability that question and modify the place of human beings in their environment, such as the use of domestic robots, first level medical diagnosis based on algorithms, the multiple metrics generated by the Internet of things.
The generation of virtual realities has been the subject of technological production for some time, but in the last few decades interest in and concern for the virtual has grown, driven by technological progress. Nonetheless, virtual reality must be understood as a singular medium and not merely as one more technical construct, but rather as a possibility to transcend in a new way the frames of physical and social reality, transforming the senses of place and generating an unsuspected, non-bodily-invasive experience.
For Ellis, a researcher of NASA's AMES center, immersion is the result of virtualization, understanding this as 'the process by which a human viewer interprets a patterned sensory impression to be an extended object in an environment other than that in which it physically exists'.
Concerning immersion, the device turns into a portal or gate, a chiasm or Moebius ribbon, connecting the user with other users and with unreal space-time worlds, the fundamental characteristics of which are immediacy and the ever more intense sensation of reality and presence.
In this sense, the project of turning the Internet into a Metaverse is betting on a radical transformation of future technologies and their relation with human beings in the near future. According to Pan Hui, a professor of information technologies media and art at Hong Kong's University for Science and Technology and NOKIA Data Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland: 'The metacosmos may seem to be far into the future, but with the arrival of technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G and Artificial Intelligence, the digital explosion of our online world is not far'.
For Richard Bartle, an academic and designer of videogames from the University of Essex, United Kingdom, the metaverse 'is a collective scheme allowing multiple 3D environments to interoperate and communicate among them in the same way as this happens in the Internet, but in 3D. It has aspects of reality and aspects of virtual reality'.
This parallel universe, examined by Dionisio, Burns and Gilbert, constitutes 'a convincing alternate realm for human cultural interaction' and presupposes four fundamental components for its feasibility, centered on the immersion experience: realism, ubiquity, interoperability and scalability.
Nevertheless, it has been posited that immersion is a necessary but insufficient condition for the purpose of generating presence, the sense of being there, which is the central goal of virtual reality.
The great goal of research on virtual reality is to account for the way in which passage through the
A fundamental precondition for the leap is the plot postulated by the virtual world to its possible participants, the illusion of plausibility of another, self-contained world; nonetheless, the very experience and the feasibility of action within the virtual world are configured through presence, through the possibility of generating the illusion of being there.
Competition between several of the big tech corporations (Microsoft, Apple and Facebook) that are seeking to reconfigure social media through virtual reality is creating a field of rivalries that revolve around virtuality and the plausibility of worlds (plots), the illusions of presence (ways of being there) and of virtual bodies, as well as their interoperation with the physical worlds.
The frontiers of futures configured by digital and virtual technologies, AI, gene editing and space exploration have transformed the old scientific cabinet of curiosities, a private collection for connoisseurs and initiates set in museum spaces, into a giant and reiterated multi-media and audiovisual exhibition of technological novelties, feats and chimeras codified in multiple narratives about the relationship between human beings and digital devices, virtual worlds, non-human intelligent entities, as well as present future and futuristic, terrestrial and galactic spaces and horizons.
In the realm of public opinion regarding these topics, a grandiloquent and heroic tone prevails, one that is centered on charming the active or potential consumer, user, patient, professional or apprentice, of the futurized frontiers, experiences and horizons. In this sense, the old print magazines for the dissemination of science have been mostly been displaced by digital sites and channels, led by scientists and engineers, with millions of followers and subscribers, in which experiments, tests and riddles, both theoretical and applied, are visualized and expounded in detail, in connection with natural science, behavioral science and biology, as well as programming and digitized data processing.
Specifically, the technologies associated with the exploration and colonization of space generate futurizations that could find a place somewhere between presentations revolving around the subject of technological advances and fictional approaches to the subject, given their presentification and naturalization through the digital representation of exoworlds,
For their part, entrepreneurs involved with the frontiers and technologies of the future—in contrast to scientists and professionals linked with research and the application of computer science, bioengineering and AI—sympathize and use some of the fictional narratives in the presentations of their idealizations and goals; at the same time, some non-institutional thinkers [
Futuristic fiction, a tried and true and privileged realm for building trans-human and extraterrestrial horizons, is now exploring and imploding the present frontiers and diversifying the space-time planes and perspectives in all their artistic manifestations—in the media, onstage and in literature—recreating and representing the many —utopian, dystopian, saving, destructive, ominous, etc.—facets of temporary frontiers and future technology bets.
Lastly, science and fiction linked to future technologies build spaces for presentation that re-shape the industrial fairs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, promoting narratives and aesthetics of enchatment, critique, dialogue and learning, all the while presenting futuristic space-time experiences designed for ever-widening audiences: entrepreneurs, experts, users.
To summarize, current futuristic narratives, in contrast with previous scientific presentations and artistic creations, appear to move in an arc that has almost completely abandoned dissemination and cultural extension purposes, in order to configure meanings and symbols concerning life's present future, of what is human and non-human,
The most visible link between politics and future technologies has to do with the design of frameworks conditioning technological developments. In this sense, the public policies of science and technology, incentives and taxation stand out, as well as all those implicating or affecting various areas concerning the deployment or restriction of said science and technology (energy, communications, etc.), which not only consider the efficiency, productivity and effects of technological developments, but also the ways in which they may incorporate or potentiate—through their design or through their use—specific forms of power and authority. For their part, the plot that future technologies impose upon politics implies the entrepreneurial corporatization of what is public, as well as the temporal acceleration of socio-political coordination efforts and decision-making.
The displacement of innovation and technological development (R&D) from the public realm—understanding this as the common good—to the realm of corporate privatization
In turn, the strength of the entrepreneurial corporation turns laboratories and places of technological development and experimentation into spaces where decisions are made regarding what gets researched, what gets designed, how it gets configured and made operational and what the consequences of future technologies are for life on Earth, and potentially outside of it. Thus, the public is initially reduced to a mere consumer of what the entrepreneur, its board and developers decide, who not only own the risk and any financial gains, but also the power.
On the other hand, the temporal acceleration due to communications and transportation technological development has a contradictory impact on politics: while individuals and groups may increase the connectivity, interaction and exchange—of information, finance, consumption—in real time, political systems that respond to different processing times (ordinary, extraordinary) and do not adjust to the logic of acceleration, find themselves under pressure and collide with the dominant efficiency and efficacy expectations, i.e. the immediate result. Discrepancies and lags emerge between the accelerated decision-making and the rhythm of the world of politics, its structures and synchronization expectations.
The high speed of current capitalism, potentiated by the technological development of information networks
Technopolitics, that is the use of devices, such as cellphones, tablets or computers, with communications software, geo-localization, social networks, among other digital codifications for exchanges between citizens and government, turns into an adaptation of politics to an accelerated pace of life. This changes the orientation of public administration and governmental communications, as well as the interaction of citizens, eliminating certain traditional intermediaries (political parties, mass communication media, leaders of social organizations) from the equation, generating rapid government responses and/or collective actions.
In this sense, Facebook or Twitter, to mention but two social networks, conceived as potentially democratizing applications, are private technological spaces that offer their services in exchange for personal information that allow them to improve their algorithms and grow their profits through the selling of said information to private and state customers, while generating bubbles or biased sounding boxes that prevent users from encountering the different
Also, algorithms weigh on realms such as surveillance and security, the procurement of justice or the implementation of social programs, thus reducing the state's bureaucratic apparatus, generating savings and attaining efficiency, although this provokes imbalances by subsuming the values and criteria implicit in the operability principle to a supposed efficacy, causing undue detentions, deaths and unjustified exclusions. The source of power is further modified by the property rights over the code and the information consumed/produced: government becomes a user without knowledge of the process of development and without the capacity to modify or control the instrument. Thus, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and free will can be much more exposed to control by private agencies than by government entities.
Social sciences, which for a long time kept their distance from the scopes and challenges of present future technologies, have begun to explore their various effects on the environment and on the interactions between human beings, devices, software and non-human entities, with an emphasis on the potential transformation of thought, language, space-time and human social links.
These transformations indicate the emergence of anthroposynthetic realities, the promises, tensions and dangers of which must be acknowledged as crossroads between the realms of politics and contemporary social sciences. In connection with this, we will now be talking about the results and potential discussions deriving from the anthroposynthetic scenarios that are examined herein.
The disruptions and contradictions in the social realm draw the limit of an extinction of the horizon of the world of life that is physically felt and experienced, an indication of which is the anachronistic multiverse of trials of past and future histories in the present, as well as the suspension of inter-generational transmission, fed by neoteny and the abstraction of the digital me. The potential responses to these transmutations of social life imply a mythological renewal of the species, of corporeity, as well as a chronotopically dispersed and multi-layered collective intelligence, the first trial of which seems to be deployed
The possibility to edit human genes, on the other hand, may lead to new discriminations, as well as to frictions in the coexistence between human beings with genetically modified capacities and qualities. Gene manipulation, as well as the cyborgization of the human species entails an aperture of the evolutionary process that is only comparable to the moment in which Neanderthals and Homo sapiens shared the Earth, with the consequent possibility of originating a new human being and its extra-planetary expansion, as well as a modification without precedent of the Earth's ecological realm.
Also, acknowledgement of the other as a political subject setting out from the displacement of the frontier between human beings and non-human entities (freedom/slavery), which is a present future, as well as the possibility to create parallel virtual worlds—metaverses—, questions the values that shall apply to the construction-codification of technologically mediated relationships, be them communitarian, liberal or anarchic, among others. The emerging legislation concerning 'electronic persons'
Lastly, space exploration in search for new materials and a potential habitat for human beings implies the establishment of cosmopolitics or astropolitics
Summarizing, future technologies are incorporated into the formulation of the social and political realms; they interconnect, generate frictions and contradictions, gaps, fractures, clefts and bifurcations, accelerations and decelerations, unexpected leaps from which new options or re-updated latencies of futures or pasts may emerge that renew society and politics, lead to their understanding as the world of life and the capacity of joint action, agreement or disagreement regarding the place of the individual or of the community, government and collective order.
The possibility of acknowledging that, behind the illusion of unity and homogeneity of time, there exist fractioned times corresponding to the—internal and external—fracture/plurality of political and social communities that are juxtaposed, intercept or interpenetrate one another implies for social sciences the challenge of investigating, experimenting and understanding the expectations, tensions, bets and games revolving around the technological frontiers and the orientation of futures.
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Lik-Hang Lee, Tristan Braud, Pengyuan Zhou, Lin Wang, Dianlei Xu, Zijun Lin, Abhishek Kumar, Carlos Bermejo, and Pan Hui. , octubre 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11200.05124/8.
Luhmann, Niklas. “The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society”. 43, núm. 1 (1976): 130-152, .
Mackenzie, Adrian. . London y New York, Continuum, 2002.
Milgram, Paul, Haruo Takemura, Akira Utsumi, Fumio Kishino. “Augmented Reality: A class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum”. 2351 (1994), 282-92. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.197321.
Miller, Tim. . Netflix, 2019, 2021, 2022. .
NASA. . Sin fecha. .
NASA. . Sin fecha. .
NASA. . .
O’Mara, Margaret. . New York: Penguin Press, 2019.
Odar, Baran bo y Jantje Friese. . Netflix, 2017, 2019, 2020, .
Palma, Brian de, Lowell Cannon y Jim Thomas. . Walt Disney Studios, 2000.
PARC y Xerox Company. “PARC History”. . .
Pardo, Lisandro. “Sketchpad: El ‘abuelo’ del AutoCAD (1963)”. [blog], 8 de septiembre, 2018, .
Pardo, Lisandro. “Xerox Alto: La restauración de un ordenador histórico”. [blog], 28 de junio, 2016, .
Prey, Robert. “Nothing Personal: Algorithmic Individuation on Music Streaming Platforms”. 40, núm. 7 (2018): 1086-1100, .
Redacción. “Sophia, la androide de ciudadanía saudí, quiere tener un bebé”. , 5 de octubre, 2021. .
Rich, Elaine, Kevin Knight y Shivashankar B. Nair. . 3era ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited, 2009.
Robot Sophia (@RealSophiaRobot). “Sophia the Robot: The Global Robot Ambassador”. , .
Robot Sophia (“Sophia the Robot”). , .
Robot Sophia (realsophiarobot). “Sophia the Robot”. , .
Sandoval-Strausz, A. K., y Nancy H. Kwak. . Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2018.
Scheuerman, William E. . Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Scott, Ridley, Hampton Fancher y David Peoples, . Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 1982. .
Simondon, Gilbert. . Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2008.
Slater, Mel, “Place Illusion and Plausibility can Lead to Realistic Behavior in Immersive Virtual Environments”, 364 (2009), 3549-3557. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0138.
SpaceX Technologies Corporation. .
Spotnitz, Frank. . Amazon Prime Video, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019. .
Stanton, Andrew. . Walt Diney Studios, 2012. .
Steuer, Jonathan. “Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence”. 42, núm. 4 (1992): 73-93.
Valentine, David, y Amelia Hassoun. “Uncommon futures”. 48 (2019): 243-60. .
Veritasium. [versión en español .
Villeneuve, Denis, Hampton Fancher y Michael Green. . Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2017. .
Virgin Galactic Holdings Incorporated. .
Virilio, Paul. . Buenos Aires: La Marca, 2006.
Lécuyer, Christophe. . Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006.Christophe Lécuyer,
Pardo, Lisandro. “Xerox Alto: La restauración de un ordenador histórico”. [blog], 28 de junio, 2016, .Lisandro Pardo, 'Xerox Alto: La restauración de un ordenador histórico',
['c'est-à-dire l'ensemble du processus créatif qui va de l'invention au développement, à la commercialisation et au déploiement de nouvelles technologies […] est au coeur de la stratégie des entreprises et des politiques publiques. Elle suscite des investissements financiers colossaux et est le fait d'ingénieurs et de scientifiques toujours plus nombreux']. Lécuyer, Christophe. “Manager l’innovation”. En Cristophe Bonneuil y Dominique Pestre (eds.), . París: Éditions du Seuil, 2015.Christophe Lécuyer, 'Manager l'innovation', Cristophe Bonneuil and Dominique Pestre (eds.), Histoire des sciences et des savoirs. 3. Le siècle des technosciences (depuis 1914) (París: Éditions du Seuil, 2015). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the authors.
Javier Echeverría refers to this new relationship between science and technology as the passage of Big Science into Technoscience. Echeverría, Javier. . Madrid: FCE, 2003.Javier Echeverría,
Ezequiel Gatto,
Luhmann, Niklas. “The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society”. 43, núm. 1 (1976): 130-152, . Niklas Luhmann, 'The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society',
Simondon's reflection regarding invention as 'a conditioning of the present by the future, by that which is not yet' and its linkage with technical imagination defined 'by a particular sensitivity to the elements' technicality [that] allows discovery of possible assemblies' results in a valuable problematization on the interaction between the actual and the virtual implied in each technological invention. Simondon, Gilbert. . Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2008.Gilbert Simondon, El modo de existencia de los objetos técnicos (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2008), 78 & 94.
Barry, Andrew. . London y New Yok: The Athlone Press, 2001.Andrew Barry,
['encapsulate a singular combination acquired in an ensemble']. Mackenzie, Adrian. . London y New York, Continuum, 2002.Adrian Mackenzie, Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed (London and Nueva York: Continuum, 2002), 13.
Aibar, Eduard. “Innovación tecnológica y cambio social: más allá del determinismo tecnológico”. Eduard Aibar y Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, . Barcelona: I.C.E. Universitat de Barcelona / Horsori Editorial, 2002.Eduard Aibar, 'Innovación tecnológica y cambio social: más allá del determinismo tecnológico', Eduard Aibar & Miguel Ángel Quintanilla,
Kittler, F. A. . California: Stanford University Press, 1999.Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (California: Stanford University Press, 1999[1986]), 183-263.
Prey, Robert. “Nothing Personal: Algorithmic Individuation on Music Streaming Platforms”. 40, núm. 7 (2018): 1086-1100, .Robert Prey, 'Nothing Personal: Algorithmic Individuation on Music Streaming Platforms',
['The goal of AI is to develop machines that behave as though they were intelligent']. Ertel, Wolfgang. . . Springer International Publishing AG, 2017.Wolfgang Ertel, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Second Edition (Springer International Publishing AG, 2017), 1.
['AI is the ability of digital computers or computer-controlled robots to solve problems that are normally associated with the higher intellectual processing capabilities of humans…']. Wolfgang Ertel, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence…, 2.
['Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the study of how to make computers do things at which, at the moment, people are better']. Rich, Elaine, Kevin Knight y Shivashankar B. Nair. . 3era ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited, 2009.Elaine Rich, Kevin Knight & Shivashankar B. Nair, Artificial Intelligence. Third Edition (New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Education Private Limited, 2009 [1983]), 3.
Laven, Simon, James. “The Simon Laven Page”, , 26 de agosto, 2022, .James Laven Simon, 'The Simon Laven Page',
Beginning in November 2022, OpenAI made available its model of conversational language Chat GPT-3.5 to Internet users, which generates coherent responses to a variety of subjects freely chosen by the user. https://chat.openai.com.
Bratton, Benjamin, y Blaise Agüera y Arcas. “The Model is the Message”. , 12 de julio, 2022, . Benjamin Bratton & Blaise Agüera y Arcas, 'The Model is the Message',
Domínguez, Nuño. “El creador de los primeros bebés modificados genéticamente vuelve a la ciencia tras salir de la cárcel: ‘Hice las cosas demasiado rápido’”. , 10 de enero del 2023. .Nuño Domínguez, 'El creador de los primeros bebés modificados genéticamente vuelve a la ciencia tras salir de la cárcel: 'Hice las cosas demasiado rápido'',
Slater, Mel, “Place Illusion and Plausibility can Lead to Realistic Behavior in Immersive Virtual Environments”, 364 (2009), 3549-3557. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0138.Mel Slater, 'Place Illusion and Plausibility can lead to realistic Behavior in Immersive Virtual Environments',
Lik-Hang Lee, Tristan Braud, Pengyuan Zhou, Lin Wang, Dianlei Xu, Zijun Lin, Abhishek Kumar, Carlos Bermejo, and Pan Hui. , octubre 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11200.05124/8. Lik-Hang Lee, Tristan Braud, Pengyuan Zhou, Lin Wang, Dianlei Xu, Zijun Lin, Abhishek Kumar, Carlos Bermejo, and Pan Hui,
['the process by which a human viewer interprets a patterned sensory impression to be an extended object in an environment other than that in which it physically exists']. Ellis, Stephen R. “Nature and Origins of Virtual Environments: A Bibliographical Essay”. 2, núm. 4 (1991), 321-347.Stephen R. Ellis, 'Nature and Origins of Virtual Environments: A Bibliographical Essay', Computing Systems in Engineering 2, no. 4 (1991), 324.
Milgram, Paul, Haruo Takemura, Akira Utsumi, Fumio Kishino. “Augmented Reality: A class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum”. 2351 (1994), 282-92. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.197321. Paul Milgram, Haruo Takemura, Akira Utsumi, Fumio Kishino, 'Augmented Reality: A Class of Displays on the Reality-Virtuality Continuum',
['The metacosm may still seem like a distant future, but with the advent of technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G, and artificial intelligence, it is not far from the digital explosion in our online world"]. Chizu, Nom. “How Close are We to Big Bang in the Metacosm? Interview with Scientist Xu Bin”. , 31 de octubre, 2021.Chizu Nom, 'How close are we to Big Bang in the metacosm? Interview with scientist Xu Bin,' Ol.mingpao.com, 31 October 2021.
Bartle, Richard. “The Ethics of the Metaverse” [entrevista con Hendrik Lesser]. , 28 de enero, 2021, .Richard Bartle, 'The Ethics of the Metaverse' [interview with Hendrik Lesser], VentureBeats, 28 de enero, 2021.
['a computer-generated universe has been defined through vastly diversified concepts, such as lifelogging [2], collective space in virtuality [3], embodied internet/ spatial Internet [4], a mirror world [5], an omniverse: a venue of simulation and collaboration [6]']. Lik-Hang Lee et. al., All One Needs to…, 1.
Dionisio, John David N., William G. Burns III y Richard Gilbert. “3D virtual worlds and the metaverse: Current Status and future possibilities”. 45, núm. 3 (2013): 34-72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2480741.2480751. John David N. Dionisio, William G. Burns III and Richard Gilbert, '3D Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse: Current Status and Future Possibilities',
Steuer, Jonathan. “Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence”. 42, núm. 4 (1992): 73-93.Jonathan Steuer, 'Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence',
Slater, 'Place Illusion and Plausibility…', 3549-3557.
Veritasium. [versión en español .
NASA. . Sin fecha. .NASA,
NASA. . .NASA,
Hehir, Jason. . EUA: Netflix, 2021, .Jason Hehir (director), 'Countdown Inspiration IV. Mission to Space' (Netflix, 2021).
Chiang, Ted. “Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter”. , 30 de marzo, 2021, . Ted Chiang, 'Why Computers Won't Make Themselves Smarter',
Brooker, Charlie, creador. . Netflix, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, .Charlie Brooker (creator),
[Exposición]. Centro de Artes y Medios de Karlsruhe, del 18/12/2021 al 28/08/2022, .
Regarding fiction on the link between what is human and what is not, quoting Haraway is useful: 'A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a machine-organism hybrid, a creature of social reality, as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is the set of lived social relations, our most important political construct, a world-changing fiction'. Haraway, Donna. . Madrid: Kaótica Libros, 2020.Donna Haraway,
SpaceX Technologies Corporation. .SpaceX Technologies Corporation, Virgin Galactic Holdings Incorporated. .Virgin Galactic Holdings Incorporated, Blue Origin Limited. . Blue Origin Limited.
Virilio, Paul. . Buenos Aires: La Marca, 2006.Paul Virilio,
Scheuerman, William E. . Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.William E. Scheuerman,
Hassan, Robert. . Boston: Brill, 2009.Robert Hassan,
Valentine, David, y Amelia Hassoun. “Uncommon futures”. 48 (2019): 243-60. . David Valentine and Amelia Hassoun, 'Uncommon Futures',
Delvaux, Mady. . European Parliament, Committee on Legal Affairs, 2016. .Mady Delvaux, 'Draft Report with Recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics',
Robot Sophia (@RealSophiaRobot). “Sophia the Robot: The Global Robot Ambassador”. , .Robot Sophia (@RealSophiaRobot), 'Sophia the Robot: The Global Robot Ambassador',
Hui, Yuk. . Buenos Aires: Caja Negra Editora, 2021.Yuk Hui,
