Computer-generated imagery (CGI) of Earth published online by the private space industry, or 'NewSpace,' produces understandings of a failing planet to justify the commercialisation of space and terrestrial extractivism. Drawing on the iconic blue-marble genre of twentieth-century NASA Earth photography and more recent digital globe imagery linked to modelling and spectacularising the climate crisis, NewSpace CGI contributes to an emergent 'sociotechnical imaginary' - a collectively held technology-driven vision of the future with practical applications - that anticipates departure from Earth for some by allowing for disaster capitalism on a planetary scale. Semiotic analysis of a sample of images obtained from the Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic websites in 2019-2020 identified three representational themes that reconstruct Earth as anachronistic and inhospitable: a parting perspective in which Earth is depicted as a point of departure; Earth as incidental to futuristic space technologies; compulsory ultrablue colouration that evokes an untenably pristine environment. Together, these formal and stylistic elements constitute a new convention for Earth representation common across the NewSpace sector that crystallises a broader shift in the ontological status of Earth in the context of twenty-first-century climate crisis, from home planet - a place of return - to failing planet of origin that must inevitably be left behind. The research makes a novel contribution to the understanding of sociotechnical imaginaries by showing how detailed semiotic analysis of corporate imagery provides useful insights into how they emerge and whose imaginaries matter.
Taking DiDi Chuxing as its case, this Forum Article examines the mechanisms through which tech oligarchy takes shape in the field of urban mobility in China. Through a digital analysis of DiDi's platform system, combined with policy documents, corporate materials, media reports, and online discussions, the article traces two interconnected processes. First, it shows how DiDi consolidated its central position through regulatory grey zones, institutional ambiguity, and the state priorities associated with techno-nationalism. China's provisional and localized ride-hailing regulatory system does not merely reflect a lack of regulation; rather, it creates adjustable conditions through which DiDi has been able to maintain a vast supply network and become a key intermediary in local governance. Second, the article argues that DiDi has become difficult to bypass through infrastructural embedding. DiDi's integration with WeChat Pay, Alipay, super-app portals, and broader mobility infrastructure has transformed ride-hailing from a standalone service into an indispensable point of access to everyday urban mobility. Its expansion into charging networks, vehicle technologies, and related mobility services has further consolidated this gatekeeping position. This Forum Article argues that tech oligarchy is not simply a renaming of market concentration or firm size, but refers instead to a form of sociotechnical power that technology companies acquire once they occupy key points of access, continuously accumulate data, and embed themselves in everyday services and infrastructural arrangements, thereby becoming difficult to bypass and difficult to hold accountable.
The theme of pioneers charting new frontiers has long been a staple of scientific and technological discourse in the United States. Scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs perceived as doing groundbreaking work are lauded as pioneers in their fields. In recent years, the application of the pioneer label has expanded to include research participants in clinical trials for neurotechnologies such as Neuralink or other brain-computer interface (BCI) devices: 'BCI pioneers.' What might explain this new popular usage of the pioneer label? American science policy in the mid twentieth century drew on the mythos of the American frontier as a way of mobilizing public interest in scientific and technological innovation on a mass scale. One such way of mobilizing interest was to use frontier rhetoric to attribute novelty to scientific undertakings and technological developments: dubbed the new frontiers. A less explored aspect of this history is the application of the pioneer label to patients and research participants in scientific, mostly biomedical, studies. Through the use of frontier rhetoric, articulations of novelty can be attributed to patients and participants, and their participatory practices, including being the first to undergo a new medical procedure, as well as being explorers and trailblazers in their own right. Such rhetoric may be understood as mobilizing support for research participants by acknowledging their bravery, altruism and contributions to science, with implications for participatory science and scientific and technological innovation.
Robotics and artificial intelligence are regularly framed as potential solutions to grand societal challenges such as climate change, staff shortages and demographic aging. The European Union has developed and deployed several challenge-oriented research and innovation policy instruments to support robotics development. One ambitious instrument called Public End-User Driven Technological Innovation (PDTI), aimed at defining and addressing challenges from the public sector using robots. Inspired in a preceding instrument called Pre-Commercial Procurement, the PDTI involved multi-stage and multi-consortia competitions focused on two scenarios: comprehensive geriatric assessment and sewer infrastructure inspection and clearance. By steering the interaction between robotics specialists and actors of these sectors across diverse European countries through a harmonised process, the PDTI simultaneously shaped, or co-produced, interdisciplinary research and European integration. However, the PDTI and its participants encountered difficulties throughout the process. The participants were less nationally diverse than the coordinators expected, and the process allowed multiple interpretations of what the end-users, challenges, solutions and market scales were. Moreover, due to its harmonised and competitive design, the process made little room for calibrating the instrument according to the diverse contexts of implementation. The analysis of the PDTI contributes to current debates in STS on the making of Europe and the contextual situatedness and coordination of interdisciplinary research. It shows how policy instruments guiding the interdisciplinary formulation of societal challenges are shaped by, but also contribute, to the objectives of European integration and harmonisation.
Powerful business groups are known to deny, block, and obfuscate public knowledge about their industries. Public comments by agricultural interest groups concerning the United States Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) antibiotic sales reporting suggest a different kind of tactic is being deployed. Agribusiness groups opposed the FDA's reporting on the grounds that the agency's data is not specific enough, and demanded the FDA produce more specific information about their industry's use of antibiotics. Government acquiescence to these demands has only produced further opposition, and additional demands for more specificity. This curious case opens questions about how vested interests engage with state data collection practices that are potentially harmful to their business and the kind of epistemic strategies they employ. The paradoxical process of making expansive demands for more specific data in the service of opposing the collection of data can be thought of as a specificity ratchet. In this case, increasing demands for specificity were accompanied by hardening opposition to the FDA's reporting protocols. More broadly, the specificity ratchet is a tactic for challenging the status of what counts as an appropriate domain of knowledge for the state by suggesting appropriate areas of data collection that are more specific, but also more difficult, to collect and analyze, and easier to contest. These techniques can be read as an inversion of the undone science practiced by activist groups seeking to ban harmful substances. In this case, however, business groups are demanding more data in order to stop, not encourage, government action.
