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Short abstract:

Building upon the literature on myth making and cultural modelling, the paper investigates what and why, promises are pinned on "green" technologies -- with focus on science fiction and utopian alternate space(s) like solarpunk.

Long abstract:

The paper looks at the work on imagining climate--which are depicted to be deeply intertwined with -- technology futures. Learning from the work on social imaginaries as proposed by Charles Taylor (2004), the paper uses a lens of expectations and constructions of myths to view our constructed relations with technology. The imagined human reality(s) in the climate futures are co- created with the ideals of technological "progress". Finding answers to social problems through "technology" is often rooted in its promise of progress and objective innovations. ‘New’ technologies are packaged through pre- existing scripts of myths about its prowess. Technology’s progress story, its dramas, and scripts of its capability to remedying the (social) ‘ills’, are repeated from the Gutenberg myth to Web 4.0 to "AI". Paper argues that the belief in “magic” of (new) technologies is not that new afterall. These mythmaking scripts are spun into speculative tales and fictions. Sturken et al. (2004) note that from 1950’s to present, science fiction (SF) film has given concrete narrative shape and visible form to America’s changing historical imagination about its “new” technologies. With this understanding, a focus on so- called green technologies and their depictions in science fiction is made. Depictions like Doraemon: Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil, anime genre etc offer rich source of this cultural imagination.

The work borrows understandings of expectation studies, cyberpunk, social imaginaries and STS to inquire cultural depictions of "green" technologies and spaces like solarpunk(s).