Utopian/Dystopian fiction

The economic and digital transformations that I’ve experienced in my lifetime can make me sometimes feel as if I’m living in a science fiction novel. I look out my window, get lost in my screens, or analyse my interview transcripts and see yet another digital practice that is alien, obvious, exploitative, kind, exciting, terrifying.

To try to make sense of the direction of travel that I’ve been experiencing, I’ve written two short pieces of dystopian/utopian fiction. Together my my colleagues Rob Kitchin, Shannon Mattern, and Joe Shaw, I also co-edited a book of fiction containing 38 chapters that asks what would it be like to live in a city administered using the business models of 38 different companies.

Graham, M. 2020. Platform Socialism. In Fecher, B. (ed). twentyforty – Utopias for a Digital Society. Berlin: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. 187-207. https://zenodo.org/record/3677158

Graham, M. 2019. City of Loops. Alphabet. In Graham, M, Kitchin, R., Mattern, S., and Shaw, J. (eds). How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables. London: Meatspace Press. 101-143.