Abstract:
My thesis is an attempt to analyze the contemporary developments of utopian criticism by investigating how Eggers’ The Circle, Ted Chiang's Liking What You See: A Documentary and the critically acclaimed TV series Black Mirror depict an alternative near-future in which developmental tendencies in the application of technology have shaped society.
This project moves from an introductory overview of the field of utopian studies to a consideration of the relation of the aforementioned imagined futures to our present; I argue that exploring how technology is portrayed might provide a way of surveying contemporary society’s possible futures, thus constituting a potential catalyst for social transformation in the post-postmodern era.
