Professor Carey Jewitt, University College London: Emerging Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Digital Touch
Jewitt will explore and make legible an emergent socio-technical imaginary of digital touch for remote communication in personal relationships. She will draw on data from three research workshops with apprentice professionals embedded in the ongoing global production of future sociotechnical imaginaries. The workshops use the design-based method of rapid prototyping within a social science frame. Jewitt will introduce and illustrate six analytical themes, generated through a multimodal and multisensorial analysis of the workshop data, that woven together contribute to an emergent sociotechnical imaginary of digital touch: the materiality and affordance of digital touch; interpretation and ambiguity of digital touch; embodiment of digital touch; post-human digital touch; emplacement of digital touch; and digital touch temporalities. She will conclude by drawing attention the possibilities and challenges, continuities and changes, and potential directions of digital touch for remote personal communication prior to its future solidification into material, political formations.