[Commlist] Call for Abstracts - As If: Speculative Performances of AI Futures - 4S2026 Toronto

Call for abstracts
"As If: Speculative Performances of AI Futures"
4S 2026 - Society for Social Studies of Science
Toronto (October 7-10, 2026)

DEADLINE: April 30, 2026.

Researchers, Artists, and ne'er-do-wells from all disciplines (but, 
ideally, communications, media, critical AI, etc.) are invited to submit 
200-300 word abstracts for participation in the following open panel:

"As If: Speculative Performances of AI Futures"
( see: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php 
<https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php> -- Panel
#123 )

All proposals _must be submitted through the 4S portal at the above 
address._

Direct any /questions/ to Organizer and Chair:
Grayson Richards
(grichard /at/ yorku.ca) <mailto:(grichard /at/ yorku.ca)>

~~~

---As If: Speculative Performances of AI Futures---

As generative models are integrated into processes of communication, 
cultural production, and political and economic administration, they 
increasingly intervene in allocations of authority, value, and 
legitimacy. Such developments give rise to urgent questions of agency 
and sovereignty: how do generative infrastructures govern, on whose 
terms, and toward what futures? This open panel invites participants to 
present speculative fictions—delivered as traditional academic papers—as 
theoretically and empirically-grounded interventions in the field, 
performing otherwise futures “as if” they were already in formation, and 
thus rendering them available for shared analysis, critique, and 
elaboration.

This approach is well suited to STS, as the speculative method 
acknowledges the role of academic knowledge production in shaping 
downstream policy and technological decision-making, while taking 
seriously the mythopoetic work performed by future imaginaries in 
moments of sociotechnical transformation. The influence of generativity 
is poised to saturate all levels of networked society, making it a 
broadly distributed site through which new forms of automated governance 
are enacted. Under these conditions, it becomes necessary for academics 
to navigate between the determinisms of industry-led futures and the 
abstraction of purely technical critique. Following Enzensberger’s 
vision of an emancipatory media, this panel seeks to imagine and perform 
futures “making the socially necessary use” of generative 
infrastructures, particularly as we seek to reclaim political and 
epistemic sovereignty in an increasingly unstable and multipolar world.

How might speculative research help us rehearse and seed alternatives 
beyond the inevitabilities presented by industry and state actors? This 
panel looks to expand the methods available for interrogating and 
intervening in the development and governance of present and future AI. 
We welcome proposals for speculative fictions delivered as academic 
papers, with a special interest in visions of generative infrastructures 
that are substantively democratic and capable of supporting the 
imaginative labour required to visualize and assemble otherwise futures.






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