The futures of the internet
In the present, people are speculating about the future under the title of ‘digitalisation’. A revolution is in the offing that will profoundly change societies and, for example, their economies. Modern societies, at least, constantly create images and narratives, in short: imaginaries, of their own future, which say less about the future itself than about society’s self-image and its expectations. Such imaginaries are found in scientific-technical, political (in the sense of official policy) and popular (e.g. cinema films) texts. But such ‘futures’ are also contested – there is a struggle over which futures are desirable and/or probable. New technologies in particular attract such socio-technical imaginaries and are shaped performatively by them: What should ‘we’ do with the new technology? What can ‘we’ do with it at all? Who is the ‘we’ that is constructed with it? In the planned project, following the differentiated theoretical-methodological discussion on the analysis of such imaginaries, a special section of the discussion on digitalisation will be illuminated: The futures of the internet.
Research focus
- History and theory of digital media
- Three-dimensional images
- Media theory and economics
- Future media and media of the future
Curriculum Vitae
- 2008-2015 Professor of Theory and Practice of Multimedia Systems, University of Siegen
- since 2015 Professor of Media Cultural Studies, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Lectures and publications
- The Net and Virtual Reality. On the self-programming of society through the universal machine, Bielefeld: Transcript 2004.
- 3D. On the history, theory, function and aesthetics of the technically transplanted image in the 19th and 20th centuries, Munich: Fink 2009
- [together with Nicola Glaubitz, Henning Groscurth, Katja Hoffmann, Jörgen Schäfer, Gregor Schwering, Jochen Venus]: A Theory of Media Upheavals 1900/2000, Siegen: Universi Verlag 2011.
- Wired. The Wire and the Battle for the Media, Berlin: Bertz + Fischer 2012.
- 3D. History, Theory and Aesthetics of the Technical-transplane Image, New York et al.: Bloomsbury 2014. Translation sponsored by the Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels, “Geisteswissenschaften International”.
- [together with Benjamin Beil, Lorenz Engell, Dominik Maeder, Herbert Schwaab, Daniela Wentz]: The Television Series as Agent of Change, Münster: LIT 2016.
- [as part of the project “Society after Money”]: Thinking Postmonetarily. Opening a Dialogue, Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2018.
- [co-edited with Phillip Mirowski and with a foreword by Armin Beverungen]: In Search of Media: Money and Markets, Lüneburg: Meson / University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
- [as part of the project “Die Gesellschaft nach dem Geld” / “Project Society after Money”]: Society after Money. A Dialogue, New York et al: Bloomsbury 2019.
- Medien und Ökonomie Eine Einführung, Series: Medienwissenschaft Kompakt, Series Editor: Prof. Dr. Ivo Ritzer, Bayreuth, Springer 2019.
- [together with Christoph Ernst]: Future Media, Series: Medienwissenschaft Kompakt, Series Editor: Prof. Dr. Ivo Ritzer, Bayreuth, Springer 2020.
- [together with Christoph Ernst] Media Futures: Theory and Aesthetics, Palgrave, forthcoming. 2021.