Speculative communities replace print-based imagined communities with screen-mediated image flows

Evidence

What rituals do our late capitalist societies draw on to imagine their own collective futures in financialized times? Today’s convergence of markets and publics, passions and interests, financial and political futures marks the emergence of speculative communities. If publishing novels and reading newspapers were the tools by which Anderson’s proto-national imaginaries materialized, then posting “stories” online and scrolling through streams of social media content is how speculative communities come to life. The everyday use of speculative technologies is capitalism’s new vernacular: cloud computing, proprietary algorithms, imageand video-sharing platforms, social media, and location-aware dating apps are the commodified tools of connectivity animating such speculative communities. The “mass ceremony” that refracts “world events” into the imagined world of speculative communities is arbitrated more than ever before by screens. The new stage of media commodification centers on “appearing” (“image”) rather than on “having” (“possession”), and, importantly, on how relating to others is mediated by appearing. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 90

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘speculative communities’ against Anderson’s imagined communities as the core contrast of the chapter.
• XREF: Directly builds on Anderson’s Imagined Communities, and echoes the reader’s existing interest in how speculation migrated across domains (dating apps listed explicitly). — connects to: Speculative communities evolve from imagined communities by financializing their three core elements — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 152
• ADDENDUM: The shift from ‘having’ to ‘appearing’ parallels the self-presentation angle the reader is tracking; connects to the immodesty article’s theme of appearance as signaling.