Hot air and corporate sociotechnical imaginaries: Performing and translating digital futures in the Danish tech scene

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of hype in performing and translating corporate sociotechnical imaginaries of digital technologies, into the context of Danish society. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of technology events in Denmark, this article proposes “hot air” as a concept to describe how hype for the future performs these imaginaries. This article describes the overlapping sociotechnical imaginaries that dominate these events and the performative effects of hype and its critique, in articulating and translating them. This article makes an empirical and conceptual contribution to the study of sociotechnical imaginaries, in particular, their socio-material performance, the role of corporations in articulating them, and how hype is central to their translation.

Constraining context: Situating datafication in public administration

“…The sheer availability of data is expected to lead to new solutions and improved services. This vision of the future is increasingly influenced by the private sector propagating notions of technological progress and benefit, as evident in a public spheres elsewhere (Hockenhull and Cohn, 2021). This could be observed in relation to the stakeholders consulted in policy production and the conferences visited in the field work.…”

“…This has been especially difficult for the NAV data team, as they do not yet have a success story of their own. As Hockenhull and Cohn (2021: 16) point out in their study on corporate sociotechnical imaginaries of datafication, these imaginaries work in complex ways, being both vacuous and productive. These authors use the notion of “hot air” to point out the way sociotechnical imaginaries can reinforce common sense notions of progress, using buzz words to create a rhetorical ethos and building authority through exemplars.…”

Public AI imaginaries: How the debate on artificial intelligence was covered in Danish newspapers and magazines 1956–2021

“…One example Schiølin cites is how Danish politicians in the Siri Commission (a Danish commission set up for developing recommendations regarding AI and digitisation) reproduce internationally held 4IR imaginaries by simply asking "how to harness and steer this predetermined future" for Denmark, instead of "questioning the premises of 4IR and its desirability, or envisioning other possible destinations for the future" (Schiølin, 2020: 555). Hockenhull and Cohn (2021) approach imaginaries related to Denmark's AI agenda in an ethnographic study of private and public Danish tech events. As found in some of the above-mentioned studies on national AI strategies, Hockenhull and Cohn (2021: 304, 317) emphasise the rhetorical nature of constructing AI imaginaries that are "taken up in practices" as they are socially performed by corporate agents towards a wider public at Danish local tech events and conferences, through "different articulations of hype".…”

Lifting the curtain: Strategic visibility of human labour in AI-as-a-Service

“…Promising to make life easier, to mimic human intelligence and surpass it, aspirational rhetorics around AI silence critics by promising that any shortfalls will be solved in the future (Floridi, 2020). The sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding AI (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) are multiple and powerful, though increasingly commodified by vendors to generate what has recently been termed the 'corporate sociotechnical imaginary' (Hockenhull and Cohn, 2021;Mager and Katzenbach, 2021). From this perspective, vendors and other industry actors generate visions of the future full of effective and ubiquitous AI services as a mechanism to generate increased funding (Mu¨tzel, 2021).…”

“…The societal imagination of AI is fuelled by fantasy more than reality, driven by media depictions of AI that can do everything (Giuliano, 2020; Selbst, 2017). As such, corporate sociotechnical imaginaries (Hockenhull and Cohn, 2021) construct understandings of how AI services ought to function effortlessly in order to trigger investment, foster innovation, and sell services (Pettersen, 2019).…”