In-Person Panel PS7.1

Futures Reimagined: Exploring Technological Visions in Asian Societies

Indonesian Public History in the Digital Future 

Jarrah Sastrawan 

In the early 21st century, digital media has established itself as the dominant form of media around the world. No longer a mere vision of the future, the digital shapes the present and connects us to the past. Digital media and technologies have become central to the practice of history, both professional and public. Indonesia offers a valuable case study for how digital technologies are crucial to historical research, education and communication. This talk examines how digital imaging, 3D modeling, text encoding and artificial intelligence are becoming indispensable tools for historians’ investigations of the deep past of Indonesia. The learning of history, whether in the classroom, in museums or in the community, is increasingly focussed on digital media to effectively engage students. Perhaps most importantly, the Indonesian public’s understanding of history is now primarily mediated through digital channels. It is therefore essential to understand the specific characteristics of public history in a digital world, how it differs from pre-digital forms of history, and the unique opportunities it presents. This talk eschews the overly pessimistic emphasis on misinformation and post-truth, to present a more nuanced and variegated picture of how Indonesia’s past thrives in its digital present and future.

Futurology in Taiwan and Mainland China: Geopolitical Imagination of Futures in the Late 20th Century 

Haruka Higo 

Futurology emerged in the postwar era as an interdisciplinary study of future forecasting, which, as historian Jenny Anderson (2018) put it, could be seen as “a field of struggle between different conceptions of how to control, or radically transform, the Cold War world.” In the 1970s and 80s, Taiwan and mainland China adopted Western futurology, although both had never referred to each other. This paper argues why and how the two societies came to value the “future” almost simultaneously and how the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China defined the “Chinese futures” separately, focusing on its geopolitical context. Thus, this paper will primarily examine the ideas on the futures of two figures, Zhang Jianbang and Qin Linzheng, who are crucial in introducing the disciplines. A quantitative textual analysis of journals they edited, Tomorrow World (Taipei, 1975-1988) and Future and Development (Beijing, 1980-), is presented. In both regions, futurology was regarded as an effective method for solving domestic crises in the long term. Additionally, both proclaim to pursue futures different from those of the West due to ideological differences; however, in practice, futurology was expected to provide “scientific” rationales for policymaking to catch up with the developed countries.

Reimagine Futures on Planet Earth Infrastructure: Big Data Center and FAST in Guizhou’s Gravity 

Weiying Yu 

In this research, the focus is on Guizhou's "new infrastructure" - Big Data Centers and FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) - as central spatial entities. They are explored as metaphorical tropes, symbolizing the gravity and verticality of Guizhou's geophysical time and power. These entities are located in karst mountains, serving as digital bunkers for the flow of data or hubs for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Guizhou's "new infrastructure" is driving future narratives within the realms of technocracy and spatial ecology, including the demand for indoor climate control indoors and the exploration of outer space. However, beneath the facade of promising digital and radio infrastructure lies fragility, conflict, and the potential for collapse. The complexity and power dynamics can be traced back to the geopolitical militarization of the Cold War era, particularly within the Chinese context of the "Small Third Front Line" (1964-1980). Guizhou's infrastructure space is constantly being rebuilt and reformed, being obliterated and recalled, as it speculates on the future of Planet Earth. This presentation probes the temporality of data accumulation, transformation, and interpretation within the boundaries of its value and speculative nature in imagination, experience, and reality, which intertwines with ecological power over time. It also situates the making of the past, which holds symbolic power, as well as the aesthetics and cultural representations of Guizhou's infrastructure space in response to the future prospects of Global Asia.

Sci-Fi Imaginary and the Production of a Future in The Wandering Earth 

Pao-chen Tang 

This presentation explores the technological aesthetics and politics of the Chinese science fiction film The Wandering Earth (Frant Gwo, 2019). Set in the mid- to late-twenty-first century, the film depicts an apocalyptic scenario in which thousands of giant thrusters are constructed across the Earth’s surface to push the planet out of its orbit—and eventually out of the solar system—away from an exploding Sun. I focus on how the film stages the presence of the capitalist worldview in this dystopian world by analyzing the rendition of futuristic technologies, achieved through both practical and digital effects. Particular attention is paid to the film’s design, construction, and staging of various types of technological devices, especially the so-called user interface which mediates human-machine interaction. By studying how speculative technologies are operated both in the diegesis and on the site of film shooting, I identify that the film’s production method greatly differs from standard Western industrial practices. The idiosyncrasy of this method, I argue, reverberates with a dominant Chinese visual culture in the age of digital information that aestheticizes labor as a bio-technological collaboration between humans and machines.