Technofutures: Technology and Utopia in Contemporary American Narratives

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.