Futures Studies, Mobilities, and the Postdigital Condition: Contention or Complement

Abstract

This paper explores relationships between recent developments in the fields of mobilities, futures, and postdigital studies. The article covers six main themes: questions and their histories; definitions; research methods and ethics; the nature and ownership of knowing and learning; understandings of time, space, identity, community, and relationships; and political processes and political legitimacy. The article was written in three steps. In the first step, the leading author (John Traxler) has identified the relevant themes. In the second step, proponents of each position have freely responded to the themes (futures studies, Stuart Connor; postdigital theory, Sarah Hayes and Petar Jandrić; mobilities, John Traxler). In the third step, the responses have been collectively (re)mixed and edited, identifying complementary and conflicting concepts and ideas. The article was initiated a month before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it was completed over one and a half years later. Thusly, responses and analyses have included the pandemic experience without explicitly focusing to the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper concludes with drawing together contributions, seeking underlying commonalities and differences, and looking for trends, convergence, and change. Epistemically, the three positions discussed in this paper are far from commensurable. Yet they are compatible and complementary, in a postdigital dialogue, in a sense that they all need each others’ inputs on the road to a better understanding of our current condition, and the road to a better future.

Theorizing Technological Mediation in the Outdoor Classroom

“…Accordingly, some shaping movements and other downplaying movements can happen simultaneously. This aligns with broader postdigital perspectives that recognize the simultaneity and ‘entanglements between the online and offline, analogue and digital, and biological and informational’ (Traxler et al 2022 : 508). Thus, the framework aims to contribute to a more precise method for understanding which mediating movements are occurring in certain outdoor learning activities.…”

“…From a broader, postdigital perspective, which considers the far-reaching consequences of rapid technological transformations in our contemporary world, Traxler et al ( 2022 : 497) argue that ‘developed in times and contexts very different from ours, traditional philosophies … need to be reimagined and repurposed for today’s challenges’. Consequently, the increasing use of mobile technologies in the outdoor classroom and the ways in which they mediate outdoor learning experiences, including human-nature and human–human interactions, are worthy topics of investigation.…”

A Critical Review of Mobile Learning: Phoenix, Fossil, Zombie or …..?

“…Firstly, 'what characterises and differentiates these societies, from each other and from earlier models of society? ', and in terms, for example, of social practices and norms, political organisation and activity, economic transactions and commodities, expressive and creative genres, the nature of culture and hegemony, the nature of epistemology and ontology, that constitute the rationale, the contexts and the foundations of learning; in terms, for example, of the nature of exclusion, development, disenfranchisement and disadvantage, and of capital(s), power and privilege; in terms, for example, of our ideas of self, identity, community, relationships, and in order to help understand, the paradigm shift being outlined, how does our depiction of societies align or interact with other depictions of societies, perhaps the postdigital or futures [67]?…”

Deliberately Destructive Speculative Design

“…A number of recent Postdigital Science and Education articles have discussed the strengths and limitations of future-oriented and speculative methods in education (Cerratto Pargman et al 2022;Houlden and Veletsianos 2022;Suoranta et al 2022;Traxler et al 2021). For example, Traxler et al (2021) present an encompassing survey relating to the question of 'what's next?'…”

“…A number of recent Postdigital Science and Education articles have discussed the strengths and limitations of future-oriented and speculative methods in education (Cerratto Pargman et al 2022;Houlden and Veletsianos 2022;Suoranta et al 2022;Traxler et al 2021). For example, Traxler et al (2021) present an encompassing survey relating to the question of 'what's next?' Using epistemological positions emerging from studies of mobilities, futures, and the postdigital, the authors perform a joint, but also contrasting, reading of what futures could hold.…”