Speculative technologies erode boundaries between previously separate realms of life

Evidence

As I have argued throughout this chapter, speculative technologies do not merely convert lived experiences into commodified predictive data. They also coproduce and represent the conditions of radical uncertainty that define a speculative mode of social being. In doing so, they integrate homo speculans in chaotic yet increasingly interlinked orders. Correspondingly, previous boundaries between realms of life (economic, social, private) catered to by speculative technologies are loosening. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 212

Categorization

• DEFINE: Consolidates the book’s core concept of ‘homo speculans’ as a mode of social being produced, not just observed, by speculative technologies.
• CANDY: The observation that speculative tech dissolves boundaries between economic, social, and private life is a crisp framing for casual conversation.
• XREF: connects to: Technological transformation of physical nature erases the dimension of contradiction in lived reality — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 305; Datafication erases the prior boundary between inner life and external forces — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 71