The Role of Imaginaries in (Co-)Creating Digital Futures With Children

• In Event: Dreams for Digital Spaces: What Shapes the Worlds of Children, Educators, and Researchers?

Abstract

This presentation is designed to view children’s imaginaries of digital futures in an experiential way by inviting the audience to write a short story—in the genre of science fiction—and interrogate the sociotechnical imaginaries emerging in the text.

Imaginaries, like those facilitated through literary fiction, are not mere illusions or fantasies but rich cultural resources that do important work in projecting positive futures that ought to be obtained. Imaginaries are imbued with implicit understandings of what is good in the social world and as such, can play a vital role in shaping social responses to innovation. Known as “sociotechnical imaginaries”, these are the “reservoir of norms and discourses, metaphors and cultural meanings” that circulate through engaged publics who “articulate feasible futures” obtained through the development of science and technology (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, p. 123). The relationship between imaginaries and technological innovation is showcased through the literary genre of science fiction. For example, some scholars argue that science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke foreshadowed satellite communications and the Internet (Robinson, 2017). These arguments and examples inspire us to advocate for the imaginaries produced by children to be included in discussions around digital futures, as their contributions now may have implications for how technologies of the future are designed. In this presentation, we describe the methodology of an ongoing project, to discuss how imaginaries can help—both conceptually and methodologically—to advocate for children’s voices to be included in the (co)creation of their digital futures.

There is a growing need to engage children in understanding their digital environments, especially following the pandemic where we saw a surge in the use of digital technologies across all sectors (De’, Pandey & Pal, 2020). This research contributes to the transformation of education by proposing a creative and forward-looking way to approach digital literacy and the take-up of digital technologies in a child’s life.

Authors

• Aleesha Rodriguez, Australian Research Council
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Ng, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, University of Wollongong
  Presenting Author