Sun Ha Hong

Technological futures increasingly dominate our collective horizons of the possible, but are themselves regurgitated across generations. Uncannily familiar visions of automatic factories, crime prediction, and robot maids resurface across the decades, keeping us stuck on the same old social and political impasses. Predictions without Futures argues that this cultural repetition - and subsequent amnesia—plays a crucial role for justifying the harms of data-driven systems, as well as foreclosing the horizon of alternative futures into "business as usual." Drawing on critical data studies and STS along with theories of ritual and (dis)belief, the book weaves together technological predictions about the future, and predictions about the future of technology, into a common story about the repetition and stagnation of the social through the mythologization of innovation.