Multiplanetary Imaginaries and Utopia The Case of Mars One
The prospect of human societies being made anew on other planets is a powerful recurring theme in popular culture and speculative technoscience. I explore what Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers to analyzing how the future is made and contested in present-day endeavors to establish humans a...
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| Published in | Science, technology, & human values Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 518 - 539 |
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| Main Author | |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
Los Angeles, CA
SAGE
01.05.2018
SAGE Publications |
| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Abstract | The prospect of human societies being made anew on other planets is a powerful recurring theme in popular culture and speculative technoscience. I explore what Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers to analyzing how the future is made and contested in present-day endeavors to establish humans as multiplanetary subjects. I focus on the case of Mars One—an initiative that aims to establish a human settlement on Mars in the 2020s—and discuss interviews undertaken with some of the individuals who have volunteered to be the first humans to live on Mars, drawing on STS work on futures and sociotechnical imaginaries and scholarly discussions of utopia. Seeing themselves as part of a project that would start to “establish what it means to live on another planet,” I discuss how interviewees talked about how sociotechnical relations could be remade in the future, both on Earth and on Mars, through the pursuit of this technoscientific project. I conclude that this project is an expression of a multiplanetary imaginary of human beings no longer subject to Earth—but, through sociotechnical inventiveness, able to live on other planets. |
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| AbstractList | The prospect of human societies being made anew on other planets is a powerful recurring theme in popular culture and speculative technoscience. I explore what Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers to analyzing how the future is made and contested in present-day endeavors to establish humans as multiplanetary subjects. I focus on the case of Mars One—an initiative that aims to establish a human settlement on Mars in the 2020s—and discuss interviews undertaken with some of the individuals who have volunteered to be the first humans to live on Mars, drawing on STS work on futures and sociotechnical imaginaries and scholarly discussions of utopia. Seeing themselves as part of a project that would start to “establish what it means to live on another planet,” I discuss how interviewees talked about how sociotechnical relations could be remade in the future, both on Earth and on Mars, through the pursuit of this technoscientific project. I conclude that this project is an expression of a multiplanetary imaginary of human beings no longer subject to Earth—but, through sociotechnical inventiveness, able to live on other planets. |
| Author | Tutton, Richard |
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| Cites_doi | 10.4324/9780203938324 10.1080/07341512.2012.722794 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2009.01818.x 10.4324/9780203360637_chapter_1 10.1057/9781137314253 10.56021/9781421402574 10.9783/9780812200669 10.1080/09537320600777002 10.1215/9780822387275 10.1353/anq.2012.0073 10.1080/14742830902770274 10.7208/chicago/9780226276663.003.0001 10.2307/1499888 10.1177/0306312712444645 10.4324/9780203941508 10.1080/07341512.2012.722789 10.1215/9780822373919 10.1177/030631270203200508 10.1215/9780822388005 10.1016/j.actaastro.2015.11.025 10.1177/0309132507081492 10.1525/9780520942615 10.1177/0952695103016001006 |
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| Subtitle | The Case of Mars One |
| Title | Multiplanetary Imaginaries and Utopia |
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