ABSTRACT
Such a grounded and situated approach as we wish to take towards new technologies does not sit easily within a current mode of writing in which a high degree of general abstraction and metaphor is used to make connections between the development of technologies and their social and cultural effects. At its extreme this tendency to both abstract and generalise the effects of technology becomes conjoined with a discussion about future forms of social life. Whilst it is important to speculate about future possibilities and recognise the extraordinarily rapid pace of technical development, their collapse produces an uncomfortable 'futurespeak'. This can then take the place of a more careful analysis of how technologies are themselves produced and form part of a complex
set of determinants upon media production and consumption within any given society. What is being identified in the shorthand of the term 'futurespeak' is a technological determinism, a trapped discussion, located in a prescient moment where technological developments, especially those of total interactivity, global networks and virtual reality are forever immanent. Futurespeak is the language of a tautological realm and amounts to a flight from the present in which technology is isolated and ultimately mystified. We do, however, recognise that it is an established and ingrained habit of thought which is hard to shake off. We may well fall into it unwittingly in what follows! Its power comes precisely because it is much harder to speak or think the actual complex relationships between technology and society at any given time. But there seems little point in focusing on technological moments of radical departure, whilst failing to notice that new technologies are continuous extensions of presently employed ones.
