Call for Proposals: “It’s Magic”—Volume 6 (2016) of Technoculture, 1 May 2015 through 30 April 2016
full name / name of organization:
Technoculture: An Online Journal of Technology in Society
contact email:
[email protected]
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
—Gregory Benford
Technoculture seeks critical and creative works that use new media and/or are on the subject of technology. Volume 6 (2016), “It’s Magic!”, focuses on the tropes that associate technology with magic and vice versa.
Topics could include depictions of technologies that treat a wide range of subjects related to the social sciences and humanities. These subjects might include:
Essays that address the two maxims found above (Clarke’s Third Law and Benford’s variant on it)
Wishful and magical thinking and technology
Energy use that seems or is unlimited (whether of humans or machinery)
Lack of agency for end users due to magical thinking about technology
Technological design and magic as its inspiration
Cultures that have used or now use technology as magic as a means of control of their populace
The idea of magical figures in games and other online environments
Games based on fantasy
The idea of the wizard in productivity software such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice
Technocracy
Popular descriptions of technology that use magical language in literature and film
Whiz kids in young adult and adult literature
Misunderstandings of technology as magic
Other readings of technology as magic in a variety of cultural and historical periods
We are not interested in “how to” pedagogical papers that deal with the use of technology in the classroom.
We publish scholarly/critical papers in the latest MLA or APA citation style, but creative works are also of interest to us. We are not seeking text-based work. Instead, we wish to publish visual media, and especially media designed for display/dissemination on a computer monitor including still images, video or audio. Genres could include digital poems, sound pieces, video essays, short audio or video documentaries, interviews, documentation of installations, and so on.
Inquiries are welcome to:
inquiries at tcjournal dot org
Technoculture is published continuously; we will accept submissions for Volume 6 (2016) between 1 May 2015 and 30 April 2016. Accepted submissions in 2015 will not appear on Technoculture’s site until early 2016, though authors should receive a final decision within two to three months after submission.
Authors of all materials are welcome to submit abstracts and inquiries for critical works, creative works and reviews.