‌Preface

Mél Hogan, Stefan Laser and Edward Ongweso Jr.

It’s April 2025 and the onslaught of global politics is rattling the world. Starting with this volume, our Predictions series takes part in the unfolding of (these) futures. As the editors and authors, we make a collective move to do/see/feel things differently from the forces that are currently shaping the planet’s fate. We might be overwhelmed by the present and feel political failure is all around us – but these feelings keep us awake and engaged. We move ahead despite the apparently bleak reality of this moment, and we readjust our critical apparatuses. Likewise, we keep on imagining new futures.

The idea for the Predictions series started as a casual conversation between the editors of this volume, but it quickly grew into a collective project and mode of collaborative exchange. For both editors and authors gathered in this series, the concept of ‘predictions’ remains strange. Here we enter territory in which we feel uneasy, uncomfortable. We stay with the discomfort, and invite the reader to join us in this space where we subvert the notion of predictability through a series of exploratory texts.

In what follows, we first make a case for engaging with practices and cultures of prediction. Scholars from the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), like many critical journalists or sci-fi authors, have been wary of the notion of prediction. Prediction is a loaded term, with uncritical determinism, rationality and objectivity at its core. Currently, we also see it unfold as the main horror show of Big Tech and Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies. Tech giants pour billions into AI prediction systems while overselling their actual capabilities and downplaying serious concerns. Companies like Palantir, Alibaba, Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon make grandiose claims about AI’s ability to forecast everything from consumer behaviour to market trends, but the reality often falls short of the hype. Many of these systems produce unreliable, biased predictions, often leading to violence and reinforcing inequalities. The massive data collection required for these predictions also raises serious privacy concerns, with companies harvesting ever-more personal information, and a lack of transparency meaning those using these systems often don’t even know for certain how much of their data has been collected, or for what purposes. Despite the flashy marketing around ‘AI-powered predictions’ many of these tools are essentially sophisticated pattern-matching systems that break down when faced with real-world complexity and change. Yet tech companies continue to push these systems aggressively, prioritising market share and profit over accuracy and ethical, planetary considerations. Promising future gains and revolutions has become the main advertising strategy for these businesses. This is why folks like Timnit Gebru argue that they don’t want to hear about the ‘future’ any more, as she did in an appearance on the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast.1 No doubt, however, there is power in prediction. What this power might mean translates into various playful, critical, raw, unhinged, despairing predictions in this and future volumes in the Predictions series. We hope they serve as examples of how prediction can be handled in critical social sciences and humanities disciplines, especially through an STS lens.

The three editors – Mél Hogan, Stefan Laser and Edward Ongweso Jr. – got together to imagine a set of alternatives in times of incredible social and political unrest, the rise of fascism, an ongoing pandemic – not to mention the encroaching threat of more in the near future – genocidal wars, the looming spectre of nuclear attack, climate catastrophes, and tech failures that do nothing but enrich the very, very few. We decided that a collection of predictions could generate a conversation as well as a sense of community. We invited our contributors to write predictions as a way to imagine and anticipate what’s to come, but also to reveal what we’re thinking and feeling right now, what our worries are, and what predicaments we face. Predicting is transforming. We therefore think of unmaking futures as realising, surviving, leaving, coming back, gaming, dissolving, making fun of, and other modes of emerging.

Across contributions, we aim for a shared aesthetic form in shape and length. The contributions are intended to pull readers into the vortex of Predictions, to invite them to think and let go, to experience the collective mind of the project. Our experiment is of particular interest to STS scholars seeking critical perspectives in the face of so-called disruptive, capital-intensive high technologies. At the same time, our volumes speak to the rising concern and sense of undertaking something for socio-economic transformation in the face of climate change and ecological harm. The volumes are intended to be an enriching experience for the authors involved, a resource for research, critical teaching and public discourse.

We are grateful to everyone who made this project a reality, and especially Hollis A. Brown who helped copy edit and provided valuable feedback to authors across volumes. We also thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, and the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen’s University (Kingston) for helping fund the project across various streams over the years it took to conceptualise and bring this series to life. The publication is also part of the research context of the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds at the Ruhr University Bochum; not least do predictions operate in the interstice between virtualisation and actualisation. Thanks to Stefan’s co-workers Estrid Sørensen and Leman Çelik for their creative co-reflection. Indeed, many thanks to our many colleagues who helped with the development of the volume. The same goes for the anonymous reviewers who helped to sharpen and contextualise the series. Thanks to the organisers and participants of the Futures Work panel at the EASST/4S conference in Amsterdam in 2024, who gave us invaluable feedback while having the STS audience in mind. We are also grateful to Joe Deville and Endre Dányi at Mattering Press, for their generosity, feedback, commitment and guidance, along with Mattering Press designer Julien McHardy, and onsite copy editor Steven Lovatt, as well as Nguyen Thi Thu Hang for helping with the final file polishing. And, of course, we are grateful to all the contributors who took time, energy, and care in writing these short, sometimes difficult, texts as predictions. Thank you for trusting us with this prompt stimulus.

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You will find this preface in all the three volumes to be published through Mattering Press via print on demand and available online. Volumes 1 and 2 have been assembled through community snowballing and conference activities. Volume 3 is based on an open call. Each volume comes with a brief additional discussion of and guide to the pieces making up the specific volume. The format of the prediction turned out to be in particular tension with academic publishing, a particularly slow craft. Hesitantion by the authors (before and during the process), will be woven in. We hope you will enjoy and treasure these brief texts as an archive of feeling.