Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the potential selves enacted through technologies for self-enhancement. By exploring three technologies engaged by people in contemporary Denmark; substances, spirituality and self-tracking we explore the development of their future imaginaries as they occur in the present.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the potential selves enacted through technologies for self-enhancement. It does so by exploring three different technologies engaged by people in contemporary Denmark; substances, spirituality and self-tracking. Inspired by works on 'technologies of the self' (Foucault 1988), 'technologies of optimization' (Rose 2007), 'enhancement technologies' (Hogle 2005) and 'potentiality' (Høyer & Taussig 2013) we analytically explore the kinds of future selves imagined and enacted in the relation between people and these three emerging technologies.

The use of psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin mushrooms, LSD and Ayahuasca, has for some become a manner of overcoming addictions and various health conditions, while others use the substances to become more efficient and energetic - professionally and privately. Likewise, spirituality and spiritual techniques such as meditation, silent retreats, mediumship, clairvoyance, healing etc. are used as media for exploring the self kinesthetically, sensorially, cognitively and emotionally in order to enhance such selves both privately and professionally. Lastly, using self-tracking technologies - wearables, smartphone-apps, tablets and computers - people assess and represent the value of their lives through data and seek to enhance personal health and well-being.

Through these three examples we discuss technologies as intricately connected to the imagination (Sneath et al 2009). By focusing on how actions in the present enact future imaginaries of potential selves, we show how technologies and imaginaries of the self mutually constitute and develop each other when questing for "better selves".