Speculative communities replace print-nationalism with social-media and dating-app connectivity.

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. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 90

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces and defines ‘speculative communities’ against Anderson’s imagined communities, giving the reader the core conceptual contrast of the book.
• XREF: Directly inherits and transforms Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities thesis from Imagined Communities.