Description
For half a century, research on brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) has inspired Science-Fiction filmmakers to explore questions of human nature, embodiment, and technological possibility. SF Film renders these speculative artefacts as tangible expectations and establishes a horizon of social and technological plausibility that guides our imagination of the future. What remains overlooked is that these images themselves are constructed, following techniques such as montage and continuity to create affective credibility and the illusion of experientiality.Drawing on the concept of diegetic prototypes and building on a hermeneutic approach to technology assessment, the paper analyses the socio-technical imaginaries surrounding BCIs in SF cinema through which contemporary hopes, anxieties, and debates on emerging technologies take narrative and aesthetic form. Across a corpus of films from different eras, the analysis identifies three recurring tropes: the BCI as media apparatus, enabling cognitive immersion and sensory replay; the BCI as transhuman interconnection, merging the human mind with the machine; and the neurointerface as a path to immortality, where mind-uploading promises life beyond biological limits. These tropes operate as media-technical configurations of prediction that reorganise bodies, data, and agency while foregrounding larger ethical issues of ownership, commodification, control, and human–machine integration.
By combining an STS perspective with a media theoretical approach, the paper highlights how predictive artefacts and cinematic infrastructures shape and stabilise imaginaries of futures and technological development.
| Period | 26 Apr 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | STS NL: STS NL, Twente, Netherlands, 15/04/26 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Twente, NetherlandsShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |
Research Field
- Societal Futures