Speculative technologies generate a distinct collective temporal experience analogous to Andersonian imagined community

Evidence

In the preceding discussion, I have highlighted two important blind spots in the tropes of technological surveillance: their neglect of the shifting social morphologies undergirding our image-hungry, financialized capitalism and their unhelpful obfuscation of the active roles we play in producing (but also in curating and reposting) the images on which such technologies feed. In the remainder of this chapter, therefore, I would like to consider a final, important aspect of speculative technologies: the distinct, collective temporal experience they generate. I have likened the activity of watching content on Instagram Stories to the reading of newspapers in Anderson’s Imagined Communities, emphasizing the effects of speed, movement, and impermanence, which, together, lead to a characteristic, speculative simultaneity. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 209

Categorization

Category: Connection Points

• XREF: Directly extends Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’ into the financialized social-media era, connecting to the reader’s interest in how speculative simultaneity creates community.
• DEFINE: Introduces the concept of ‘speculative simultaneity’ as a temporal mode generated by fleeting content.

Related

• Watching Instagram Stories generates a collective speculative temporality akin to newspaper reading (similarity 0.94)
• The ephemeral social-media story format embodies a new speed-based speculative simultaneity (similarity 0.89)
• Social media stories create a simultaneous temporality built on speed and impermanence (similarity 0.88)
• Speculative communities form through fleeting digital rituals, not shared narratives. (similarity 0.85)
• Speculative communities replace print-based imagined communities with screen-mediated image flows (similarity 0.84)
• Speculative communities replace print-nationalism with social-media and dating-app connectivity. (similarity 0.83)
• Speculative communities evolve from imagined communities by financializing their three core elements (similarity 0.80)
• Anderson’s imagined-communities framework applies to speculative finance and collective imaginings. (similarity 0.79)