Speculative texts and what’s next

Speculative fiction provides ways of imagining what our future, networked world might look like. Early media studies scholars such as Neal Postman have considered a world consumed by media. Applying this approach, the essay looks at two speculative texts, M. T. Anderson’s Feed (2002) and Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers (2023), and discusses how the natural world and ourselves become entwined in corporate power and the so-called rewards of network connection.