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AbstractThis paper is concerned with the way that futures for autonomous mobility are envisioned, specifically in industry representations. We begin by analysing a pair of representative commercial narratives around future autonomous mobility, from Wing and Audi, finding them to be simplistic, exclusionary, and focused on individual freedoms. Building on this analysis, we draw on ideas around mobility justice and creative mobilities methods to craft an alternative science fiction vignette, one that augments a future from a gig worker’s perspective. In doing so, we foreground multiple injustices and insecurities, and aim to highlight the potential within creative and narrative methods to complicate dominant stories about technological futures, to articulate alternative futures, explore them, research with them, and make other futures more tangible. The paper concludes by discussing the need for such approaches given the dominant framings around autonomous mobility futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses 556 model scenarios assessed by IPCC's Working Group-III for the 6th Assessment Report, which have an underlying 10-region classification and correspond to restricting warming levels to 1.5 ℃ and 2 ℃. We show that across all scenarios, the current global inequalities in incomes, energy use, and emissions, are projected to continue even in 2050. Scenarios also project higher per capita fossil fuel use and lower carbon dioxide removal in developed countries in 2050 compared to developing countries. Our results demonstrate the scale and scope of unequal outcomes in these scenarios, that have been anticipated by theoretical critiques of the underlying models. The paper explores the potential reasons for the unequal outcomes of the scenarios focusing on the two key issues of scenario design and modelling framework. Our analysis also suggests that instead of summary assessments focusing on singular median values or percentile ranges, as undertaken in the IPCC report, more could be learned from focusing on differences between models or considering outliers that could present new and innovative solutions to the determination of equitable and efficient future mitigation pathways. Our analysis underlines the need for new frameworks for emissions modelling and scenario building, for constructing possible futures that can also foreground equity and climate justice. Key Policy Insights: Scenarios assessed by IPCC project continuing global inequality in 2050. Inequality is pervasive across all variables – energy, fuel use, GDP, and emissions. Higher CO2 reduction and CDR are projected for some developing regions. IPCC must comprehensively review scenario assessment and reporting processes to ensure the transparent representation of all scenarios in the literature. There is a need for new scenario and modelling frameworks that consider and include climate equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Videogames are an increasingly prominent use case for blockchain technology (what has been termed 'cryptogaming'). Drawing on documents, such as industry presentations, social media posts, interviews and white papers, this article analyses discourses surrounding cryptogames, focusing on the claims made by cryptogame developers and investors. We ask two related research questions: What are the dominant visions of a cryptogaming future, imagined by and for various constituencies? And what sorts of values get realised in such an imagined future of game development and use? We argue that cryptogames imagine players and developers as financialised subjects, adopting attitudes and practices of risk and investment as salves to both microeconomic problems in the games industry as well as broader macroeconomic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the experiences of middling Filipino transnational families in Singapore concerning the intersections of hope and aspiration in constructing their imagined futures. In particular, I examine how middling migrants engage in transnational migration and their children's university education to achieve such futures. Using their case, I explain how hope undergirds and sustains aspired-for familial futures until they come to fruition. I argue that hope, while futural and uncertain, is felt in the present because it is the scaffold on which the imagined future lives of families rest. Moreover, in investigating the importance of place in the construction of future lives, I show how Singapore provides space for hope to emerge in relation to the future lives imagined by middling Filipino transnational families. Finally, veering away from the normative conception of hope as a constant banner of optimism, I suggest that when entangled with familial aspirations, hope brings to the fore emotions and practices that are not always positive but necessary for the realization of aspired-for familial futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary explores the promises surrounding the construction of a new coalmine in Whitehaven in the UK. The impacts of the closure of carbon‐heavy coal facilities increasingly feature in scholarship and policy understandings of energy transitions: illuminating the importance of the temporalities of transition. We seek to further such temporal understandings to highlight the importance of 'futures' in discussions of coal, which despite promises of abatement maintains a significant presence in global energy relations. We explore how the Woodhouse Colliery at Whitehaven has come to represent a series of fixes—in both socio‐ecological and affective terms: promising new futures of work, energy and regional development. These futures are contested by opponents of the project, who highlight the emissions to be associated with the site. In tracing these competing futures, we illuminate the intricate ties between historic industry, present‐day regional identity and economies, and the role and presence of carbon in visions of what comes next. In this paper we explore the imagined futures associated with the proposed Woodhouse Colliery in Whitehaven in the UK. Grounded in promises of future economic security and the substitutability of coal extracted in Whitehaven for coal from other regions, we argue that these promissory futures play an important role in national and international debates about the direction of a transition away from fossil fuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the possibilities for organizing one's personal life around co-residing friendship and roommate relationships in the life course position of adulthood. The normative significance of coupledom and procreation as markers of adulthood has hardly diminished, although the nuclear family model has opened up in past decades in Euro-American countries. I argue that the close connection between coupledom and adult status sidelines communal living as a relational arrangement when persons age beyond the socially shared understanding of youth. Moreover, resisting this temporal order leads communal dwellers into a socially structured negotiation of their future trajectories, where personal autonomy in friendship and roommate relations poses an intra-relational obstacle to building a communal future. The paper is based on 31 interviews with residents of Finnish small-scale communes. Communal dwellers' negotiations of future trajectories dealt with finding someone to build their life with, whether commitment could be expected in friendship and roommate relations, and whether long-term communal living is compatible with existing housing structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a problematic tradition of dualistic and reductionist thinking in artificial intelligence (AI) research, which is evident in AI storytelling and imaginations as well as in public debates about AI. Dualistic thinking is based on the assumption of a fixed reality and a hierarchy of power, and it simplifies the complex relationships between humans and machines. This commentary piece argues that we need to work against the grain of such logics and instead develop a thinking that acknowledges AI–human interconnectedness and the complexity in such relations. To learn how to live better with AI in futures to come, the paper suggests an AI politics that turns to practices of serious attentiveness to help us re-imagine our machines and re-configure AI–human relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories are an important indicator of our vision of the future. In the case of artificial intelligence (AI), dominant stories are polarized between notions of threat and myopic solutionism. The central storytellers—big tech, popular media, and authors of science fiction—represent particular demographics and motivations. Many stories, and storytellers, are missing. This paper details the accounts of missing AI narratives by leading scholars from a range of disciplines interested in AI Futures. Participants focused on the gaps between dominant narratives and the untold stories of the capabilities, issues, and everyday realities of the technology. One participant proposed a "story crisis" in which these narratives compete to shape the public discourse on AI. Our findings indicate that dominant narratives distract and mislead public understandings and conceptions of AI. This suggests a need to pay closer attention to missing AI narratives. It is not simply about telling new stories, it is about listening to existing stories and asking what is wanted from AI. We call for realistic, nuanced, and inclusive stories, working with and for diverse voices, which consider (1) story-teller; (2) genre, and (3) communicative purpose. Such stories can then inspire the next generation of thinkers, technologists, and storytellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests using two-regime Markov-switching models with asymmetric, time-varying exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MS-EGARCH) variances in random-length lumber futures trading. By assuming a two-regime context (a low s = 1 and high s = 2 volatility), a trading algorithm was simulated with the following trading rule: invest in lumber futures if the probability of being in the high-volatility regime s = 2 is lower or equal to 50%, or invest in the 3-month U.S. Treasury bills (TBills) otherwise. The rationale tested in this paper was that using a two-regime Markov-switching (MS) algorithm leads to an overperformance against a buy-and-hold strategy in lumber futures. To extend the current literature in MS trading algorithms, two location parameter scenarios were simulated. The first uses an unconditional mean or expected value (no factors), and the second incorporates market and behavioral factors. With weekly simulations form 2 January 1994 to 28 July 2023, the results suggest that using MS-EGARCH models in a no-factors scenario is appropriate for active lumber futures trading with an accumulated return of 158.33%. Also, the results suggest that it is not useful to add market and behavioral factors in the MS-GARCH estimation because it leads to a lower performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper - where we will draw on data from a small scale longitudinal study of young people's post-COVID aspirations and sense of their futures in a de-industrialising city - we will suggest that Appadurai's (2004) ideas about the 'capacity to aspire' encourages us to shift our focus from the 'aspirations' of individual young people to think, instead, about the different resources that might be at play in shaping a capacity to aspire. Departing from the detailed stories of two of the young -people who participated in this project, we will argue that critical, post-humanist and futures oriented ontologies offer productive possibilities for reimagining the 'promise of education' in relation to young people's aspirations, their dreams and hopes, fears, anxieties and despair that emerge from the "thick of social life" (Appadurai, 2004) in which young people live, imagine who they are, and what they might become. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an open inquiry that embraces curiosity and vulnerability in the anticipatory space of an art-led, Futures orientated PhD supervisory relationship. We use sandtray work to elicit an anticipatory aesthetic, recording emergent data and processes through the dialogical method of duoethnography, and the visual format of photography. We seek to generate an environment that rouses imagination, creativity and futures consciousness implicit in the Australian Research Council's definition of research. We use a duoethnographic method to collaborate, reflect and provide dialogical ways to surface deep meanings. There is a shared equity of understanding of the research process as a vehicle for engaging with the unknown. Both supervisor and supervisee hold explicit and implicit referent knowledge in relation to person and process. Therefore, it is a collaborative, reciprocal and fluid environment, where 1 + 1 = ∞ possibilities. We use sandtray to provide the location of open inquiry, dialogical reciprocation, reflection, and improvisation. This gives voice to the meaning that is made in the meandering paths between the words and an opportunity to loosen the shackles of business as usual. The sandtray moves not-known material into conscious awareness via somatic/intuitive symbol selection, engagement with metaphor, and projection; each privileging the unconscious. Introducing sandtray process into the supervisory relationship provides an alternative and adjunct modality of non-verbal inquiry that can support the calling of an anticipatory aesthetic through the Futures Senses. While there is rich, though sparse, literature describing the facilitation of sandtray work within the context of clinical supervision of mental health professionals, the introduction of such an approach within research supervision appears rare, or unique in relation to published research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand social issues and practices such as those related to climate change and technological change that are clearly future‐oriented – collectively experienced events that are "not yet" – and co‐constructed by different actors, we need nuanced conceptualizations of how people think about, negotiate and co‐create futures that allow us to understand not only what people (can) think and do about future‐related issues but also how that happens, what for and with which implications. However, so far, one of the key theoretical approaches that has conceptualised how people make meaning in situations of change and uncertainty – the socio‐psychological social representations theory (SRT) – has not often engaged with the future or with different forms of temporality. By contrast, the French pragmatic sociology of engagements and critique (PS) has engaged with these notions, conceptualising them in relation to materiality and a plurality of moral orientations – two dimensions often seen as key to how collective futures are made and imagined. To offer a more nuanced and systematic conceptualization of how people represent the future and with what consequences, this paper will present, compare and synthesise SRT and PS, as a first step towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on social change and representations of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to bring together two seemingly disparate conversations, design and environmental education, with the intent to offer an interesting, new, useful approach to developing educational responses to the climate and ecological crises engendered by the Capitalocene. Beginning with observations on the relevance of design to the creation of alternative futures, we outline results from a six-person year-long research project that led us to identify six principles for guiding eco-social-cultural change: all my relations, abundant time, mystery/unknowability, embeddedness/integration, ancient futures, and (re)creative dissonance. We situate this work within transformative orientations to design, which are shown to parallel critical threads in the environmental education literature. We then extend, rework, and reimagine the six principles by suggesting how they can serve as prompts to assist environmental educators to reexamine and move beyond problematic norms of the Capitalocene in their thinking and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces Guadiana in Four Movements, a research-short film that explores the present and future of the River Guadiana’s Lower basin in the Iberian Peninsula. Through a multidisciplinary approach combining social science and the arts, the film integrates diverse audio and visual materials from multimodal ethnographic fieldwork with the sonification of climate scenarios. By drawing connections that demonstrate the tensions between diverse formations and temporalities and by accounting for how these tensions are shaping, and taking shape along, the Lower Guadiana, it tests the boundaries and potential of geographic theory, revealing how creative practice can engage with complex socio-material and socio-natural assemblages. This essay underscores the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing cultural geography and provides alternative ways to understand and engage with Guadiana’s landscapes and possible futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a brief overview of the negative dialectical turn in Adorno's post-war writings when he began to give more serious attention to the type of ‘subjective possibilities’ generated by encounters with adversity. The analysis below explores the relevance of Adorno's work to current efforts to make sense of an increasingly felt contact with climate change harm. In particular, Adorno's insights on the paradoxical relationship that emerges between scenarios inspiring despair and hope for a better future. Rather than ignore contradiction and focus only on the possibilities and potentials that inhere in the good, Adorno's preference was to examine those that also emerge from a crisis ridden present. Similar to other Frankfurt School adherents, Adorno drew attention to an important distinction between inner and outer worlds and their critical mediation via the thinking process – the bridging of inner worlds of intuition, feeling, sense perception, the free flow of thought and imagination, and the outer world, episodes of violent destruction and ongoing change, noting how insights generated by the meeting of these worlds are never singular or straightforward in a positivist sense but are often marked by plurality, contradiction and transformation. The focus in this instance will be on how thinking about the climate present can also generate a thinking beyond to other possibilities (e.g. imaginaries of a future degrowth society). It will assess current moves to institutionalise new geo-engineering technologies to stabilise climate conditions and protect capitalism's growth imperative, noting how the contradictions inherent in such proposals can trigger a dialectical turn towards other futures and other relations with nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]