[EASST-Eurograd] Bored of US Tech-bro-topia👹? OA SI: Towards Popular Techno-Futures. 🌎 A Global Culture Perspective 🌎

[Jascha Bareis via Eurograd]

Dear list members:

New special issue of Digital Culture & Society has now been published (fully open access) with independent publisher Transcript:  

🔥 Towards Popular Techno-Futures. A Global Culture Perspective 🔥

by the Transcript journal Digitial Culture & Society.
Editors Anya Heise-von der Lippe, Felix Spremberg, Jascha Bareis

Authors from all around the globe discuss: How do communities around the world 
rethink techno-futures through friction, re-appropriation, spirituality 
and, possibly, wholesome change - beyond Western visions of Tech? 

From families in Kharkiv in Ukraine, to platfrom governance frameworks of 
markets in India; from techno-orientalism in China, to Afrofuturist 
dreamscapes; from the weaponization of social Media in Mali to internet 
commons of the Northern Michigan Tribe; from Latin America's sci-fi of 
resistance, low-tech alternative education interventions in class rooms,
 to Japans dreams of a Society 3.0....

 🧚‍♂️ Where is this globe 🌎 heading to? 🧚‍♂️

You can access the full issue OA here:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://digicults.org/issues/112-2025-towards-popular-techno-futures-a-global-culture-perspective/__;!!L4CEoEA!qkJacRg3dfxMJ_XIN1REyAjzl8ml6iar9h9HK-Mbz1SQLJxJLYtRbfu6d07wvOLF17c2zvwrxmuXwV-8zM0zDk2_blTCgofE$

Print and copies can be ordered from the publisher's website:

https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-7321-0/digital-culture-society-dcs/

The conversation continues on the upcoming EASST 2026 panel in September: "Unpacking alternative futures" led by Mareike Smolka.

Table of Contents:

Outdated Enchantments of Progress?
Towards Global Techno Futures
Jascha Bareis, Anya Heise-von der Lippe and Felix Spremberg

I Techno-futures in National Strategies and Counter-Discourses

Techno-futures with Chinese Characteristics?
Negotiating Techno-Orientalism in Chinese Digitalized Lifestyle and Aesthetics
Chenyang Song

Constructing an “AI-driven Society”
Idealization and Anxiety in Japan’s National AI Strategy
Felix Spremberg, Takahiro Nishiyama and Jascha Bareis

Platform Futures Framework
A Methodological Framework to Assess Digital Platform Viability and Sustainability for Marginalized Users in the Global South
Aditi Bhatia-Kalluri

 

II Techno-futuristic Communication, Empowerment and Community-Building Strategies

Mind the Mind
Analysis of Media Habits of the Future
Alina Kalashnikova

Internet Futuring
How Communities are Connecting Themselves
Henna Zamurd Butt, Nicole P. Marwell, Nick Feamster

voxUp
Co-Developing a Music Technology for Beatbox Looping in a Special Education Needs Setting
Asha Ward and Jon Burgess

 

III Techno-futuristic Media: Conflicts and Counter-Narratives

Digital Dimensions of Conflict
Analyzing Malian conflict and violence through Social Media and Mixed-Methods Approach
Jelena Prokic, Luca Bruls, Mirjam de Bruijn

Visualizing the Invisible
Representations and Narrative Motifs of AI in Latin American Film
Anne Burkhardt

Afrofuturist Techno-Futures Reimagined
Magic, Dreams and Boundary-Crossings
Louis Nana and Anya Heise-von der Lippe

Contributors

Best,

the special issue editors

Jascha Bareis, Anya Heise-von der Lippe and Felix Spremberg