Confirming my hunch that next semester I’m going to bring a librarian into my grad seminar to teach us (me too!) how to do a non google-based (non google scholar esp) lit search.

Not mentioned, though what i personal think is the most fascinating part of this whole story, is that the founder of Supernatural is Chris Milk, he of Empathy Machine fame. Empathy didn't scale, didn't have a payday, but this fitness app sure did. The fantasy and facade of VR for Good...

#5!

Thanks for reading the thread. if you want a PDF and don't have access, shoot me a DM. 9/9

Scott Fisher introduced me to design fictions in 2018 when I was researching “In the Land of the Unreal.” That thinking didn’t make it into the book, but very happy it found a place in this article! 8/

This is part of a special issue, “After the Metaverse” edited by @jmalazita.bsky.social and @aleenachia.bsky.social. It’s for Games and Culture, and I thank them for letting me clumsily situate some of my ideas within Game Studies. 7/

Focusing on the fiction of keynotes connects them to related modes of storytelling. We can place them on a spectrum of technological fictions – including science fictions – any of which might or might not become actual futures. 6/

I watched, uh, a lot of these keynotes. For science. But these watchings and re-watchings made me realize the increasingly fictive qualities of what used to be straightforward demos 5/

I dissect the cinematic techniques used by corporate keynotes that purposely confuse fiction and fact in order to make a desired future appear real and inevitable. These techniques persist, even as branding (“metaverse”) falls out of favor, allowing us to trace continuities across hype cycles 4/

In calling Big Tech’s visions “technological fictions,” I seek to diminish their authority. This is not an inevitable future, and the fiction of the technologist is no less fanciful than that of the artist or filmmaker. 3/

Big Tech's vision is a scary one, in which “the corporate product, in whatever technical form, is the mediating screen through which we always and only experience the physical world.” This is a vision to refuse, and the article offers one strategy for doing so 2/

we have Dora's and Lithuanian ancestry and suspected out of wedlock love children and red heads in my family too, so a lot to relate too ;)

threaten us with a good time, why don't you

“There needs to be some deep reckoning with what we do with a tool that benefits individuals but destroys science.” @lmesseri.bsky.social www.science.org/content/arti...

'reading encouragement program' lmao