Concrete Utopias of Digitalization Compared: The Case of the Post-Work and the Maker Movements

Abstract

How do different movements enact certain visions of emancipation and technology? In this chapter, Frey and Schneider discuss Marx’s classic framework of emancipation from and emancipation within work and its relationship to technology. The chapter combines this critical tradition together with a social-constructivist framework of technology and analyzes how certain visions of emancipation and technology are enacted in different activist practices. The empirical cases of the post-work movement in the UK and the maker movement highlight how progressive actors are using imagined and actual digital technologies to construct imaginations of better futures. The authors argue that STS should turn its attention more toward such “concrete utopias” to make constructive and possible emancipatory alternatives to the status quo more visible and to help shape societal dialogues on the future.