Emerging Technologies: Theories, Futures, Provocations

Technologies advance and evolve in ways that outpace how we analyze and understand them academically. As scholars carefully consider the micro-, meso-, and macro-level influences of technology on the human condition, the technologies themselves are innovated and diffused rapidly. Here, provocations from established and early career scholars ponder the ways in which we can generate, challenge, and accelerate our understanding of emerging technologies. Chapters critically probe these technologies—both novel forms of existing technology or nascent and even speculative technologies—by summarizing and offering historical context to the "state of the art" regarding what we currently know, critiquing and discussing current and anticipated knowledge gaps, and provoking others to creatively advance on these gaps. This volume provides a checkpoint for the status of theorizing around emerging technologies, and divining solutions for refining our approaches to studying these technologies.