The making of futures in sociotechnical worlds

Book chapter, 2024

STS scholars investigate the future by focusing on how it is being made and how ideas about it are involved in shaping sociotechnical worlds. STS research on futures focuses on the practices of imagining, constructing and constituting possible future worlds. This entry overviews some of the overlapping fields of research addressing futures and future making. It describes the STS approach known as sociology of expectations and illuminates conceptual affinities with sociology of time and history of ideas. Computer modelling is discussed as an example to illustrate how future-making devices materialize worlds imagined in climate science and constituted in risk-related policy.