Literary and speculative texts are increasingly recognized as sources of cultural and ethnographic insight. Hemer (2016) argues that novels, films, and other narrative forms can function as ethnographic data, revealing dimensions of social change that conventional empirical methods may overlook. Speculative and fictional methods can also support critical interrogation of poorly constructed technological problems (Siffels and Sharon 2024). Within this broader turn, literary ethnography (Hemer 2016), SpF methodologies, and social fiction (Brown et al. 2025) position fiction as an epistemological tool for engaging complexity, amplifying marginalized perspectives, and fostering imaginative reflection.

SpF has also been mobilized within futures research. Watson (2025) emphasizes how SpF practices produce multi-scale narratives connecting local experience with global trajectories, while Liveley et al. (2021) highlight narrative as a resource for futures literacy. Award-winning SpF texts have been analyzed to extrapolate possible futures across political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental dimensions (Brozović et al. 2025). Shapiro (2024) argues for science-fictional thinking as a lens to understand the technocultural present and shape its future, and Rahwan et al. (2025) propose ‘science fiction science,’ combining experimental and narrative approaches to simulate future technologies and assess social implications. Across these strands, SpF can counter the “hegemony of the new” (Rockmore 2017, n.p.) by creating reflective spaces that question dominant technological narratives and support more equitable and responsible imaginaries.

Braun’s Literary Futures method (Braun 2021; Braun et al. 2024) reimagines the role of literature, storytelling, and narrative in futures work by positioning literature as cultural and cognitive infrastructure: symbolic and affective scaffolding through which people make sense of social change, technological disruption, and ethical uncertainty. This aligns with sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2015), understood as collectively held visions of desirable or undesirable futures shaped by cultural narratives, institutional logics, and political structures. Literature can both articulate and contest these imaginaries by critiquing dominant trajectories and generating alternative visions.

From futures studies, we draw on Sohail Inayatullah’s ‘Futures triangle’ (2023), which foregrounds the interplay between weights of the past, pushes of the present, and pulls of the future. This resonates with collective intelligence (Lévy 1997), where knowledge production is distributed across diverse actors and domains. By using literature as a shared medium, future-oriented inquiry can be embedded in accessible cultural forms that offer resonant metaphors for complex sociotechnical issues.

Braun et al. (2024) argue that traditional futures methods often overlook the social, collaborative, and affective dimensions of the future. Engaging futures requires narratives and socially attuned tools attentive to relations, practices, hopes, and capacities. Building on this perspective, and while partially differentiating our approach (see ‘Methods’), this study applies an adapted iteration of Literary Futures to examine digital and technological futures in practice.

We address the research question: How can speculative fiction be operationalized as a participatory method for anticipatory technology assessment, and what kinds of futures imaginaries does it enable non-expert participants to articulate?

Therefore, this paper presents an exploratory proof-of-concept study investigating how speculative fiction can be operationalized as a participatory method for anticipatory technology assessment (TA). In doing so, it also contributes to ongoing dialogue between literary studies, futures studies, and participatory foresight by showing how narrative interpretation can support non-expert engagement with sociotechnical futures.

The workshop was designed as a low-barrier, self-paced experience of approximately two hours. Unlike Braun’s method, it was conducted asynchronously on Miro, a collaborative platform used as an interactive workspace containing excerpts, prompts, reflection exercises, and foresight tools arranged in a guided sequence (Fig. 1, 2, 3).

The Circle was selected due to its accessible near-future dystopia and its thematic relevance to contemporary digital systems and social practices. Dystopia functions as a critical exaggeration of present sociotechnical logics and foregrounds ethical tensions, power asymmetries, and unintended consequences, making it suitable for TA. Techno-utopian or solutionist narratives were considered but deemed less effective for eliciting critical reflection among non-experts because they often naturalize technological progress rather than problematize it.

Participants were invited to examine real-world sociotechnical challenges through fiction, use The Circle as a stimulus for imaginative speculation, and apply literary and foresight tools to emerging technological contexts. They

Six participants took part in the workshop. They were recruited from diverse educational and professional backgrounds to reflect the focus on non-expert engagement rather than domain-specific expertise. The aim was heterogeneity rather than representativeness. Recruitment was voluntary. In Tab. 1, we synthesize participants’ background, the theme, and lens they selected during the workshop.

The workshop generated two main forms of qualitative material:

Given the study’s exploratory and practice-based nature, analysis focused on identifying how participants interpreted, translated, and reimagined sociotechnical futures through the workshop design, rather than on measuring consensus or extracting fixed attitudes.

The ‘Futures triangle’-responses were analyzed through a comparative interpretive reading. We reviewed all participant entries across the three temporal dimensions and compared how they positioned the relationship between the fictional world of The Circle and present-day digital realities. The analysis focused on identifying recurring interpretive patterns, temporal framings, and shared assumptions regarding continuity, escalation, and desirable alternatives. This strand of analysis supported the reconstruction of participants’ broader sociotechnical imaginaries.

The creative outputs were analyzed using inductive reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006). The analysis proceeded in several iterative stages:

Weights of the past: Participants discerned parallel genealogies of control between The Circle and contemporary realities. In the novel, surveillance originates from corporate utopianism and moral anxiety; in the present world, from enduring structures of (neo)colonialism, industrialization, and neoliberal capitalism. In both, domination is sustained through self-surveillance and conformity, where history operates as inertia rather than critical reflection, substituting transparency for truth and efficiency for ethics.

Pushes of the present: Participants interpreted The Circle as an intensified expression of contemporary sociotechnical dynamics rather than a speculative departure. Both fictional and real worlds were seen as operating through data-driven governance that defines value, perception, and legitimacy. The key distinction was saturation: The Circle portrays the full realization of surveillance and control dynamics that our world still negotiates through partial resistance, policy, and critique.

Pulls of the future: Participants interpreted The Circle as the culmination of trajectories already unfolding. The novel’s portrayal of perfection was read as masking deeper exhaustion that parallels contemporary anxieties driving ideals of progress. For participants, the novel extends current logics of optimization and efficiency until autonomy becomes managed participation and empowerment becomes indistinguishable from depletion.

Five themes emerged from the thematic analysis.

Reclaiming human-centeredness: The main underlying value that emerged within this cluster is the idea that technology should augment human capabilities and social interactions rather than substituting or diminishing them. In many creative entries, we saw a rejection of technological domination in favor of lived experience, connection, empathy, curiosity, and well-being. Other aspects that emerged are related to learning, care, and creativity that should become embodied and relational practices.

For instance, one participant said “In my teaching, I would use this method to help students critically reflect on media, technology, and power structures through storytelling and comparison. In my research and creative work, it supports envisioning ethical, human-centred alternatives to dominant digital narratives – especially relevant in education and digital culture.”

From control to co-agency: Many participants imagine futures where humans and technology engage in relationality rather than hierarchy. They put emphasis on co-agency, seen as distributed among humans, institutions, and technology. Therefore, humans and machines should learn, create, and evolve together. The participants collectively imagine a transition from societies of surveillance to societies of stewardship. Power becomes ethical responsibility. For the participants, the path forward is more mindful technology, in the form of systems grounded in empathy and awareness.

The ethics of transparency and accountability: Several reflections turn personal psychology into political ethics. Future accountability begins with self-awareness: understanding one’s motives, biases, and moral limits. Thus, transparency becomes a means to achieve ethical clarity, to understand the sociotechnical systems that we inhabit. The proposed alternative to total visibility is reflexive transparency: systems designed for mutual trust, where both citizens and institutions are accountable, but privacy remains sacred.

One participant mentioned that “exploring possible futures can reveal hidden assumptions, fears, and desires in society. It allows us to question the present and imagine alternatives, not just through facts, but through empathy.”

Learning as collective flourishing: Education and knowledge production are reframed as civic practices. This imaginary recurs as a metaphor, which helps reclaim governance, infrastructure, and education as co-constructed. Futures and design thinking are seen as social infrastructures, i.e. tools to cultivate imagination, empathy, and adaptability. In participants’ visions learning becomes playful and lifelong and focuses on nurturing citizens and citizenship.

Intimacy, care, and the return of the private: Repeatedly, the creative entries frame a longing to reconcile public life (exposure, digital identity) with private interiority (reflection, solitude). The most compelling alternatives envision wholeness: a world where external visibility and inner peace coexist.

Co-produced SpF contributes reflexivity to TA by revealing how people imagine, desire, and morally interpret technologies before they exist or stabilize. Participants spoke not only about technology, but also about selves, ethics, and systems of value.

SpF also mediates between expert foresight and lay imaginaries. Narratives act as epistemic interfaces translating abstract sociotechnical dynamics into accessible, affective experiences. Through storytelling, participants externalize tacit values, fears, and desires and become co-authors of imaginaries that can inform sociotechnical governance. In this sense, the ‘Futures triangle’ supported the surfacing of moral and emotional knowledge relevant to responsible innovation.

More broadly, SpF helps redefine ontologies around technology by foregrounding that futures are not neutral projections but moral, cultural, and affective constructions. Co-produced SpF generates plural imaginaries that counter the hegemony of techno-optimistic narratives and makes visible how technologies and societies co-constitute each other through emotion, history, and desire.

While inspired by Braun’s Literary Futures method, our approach departs in three respects: (1) the use of speculative (rather than non-speculative canonical) literature, (2) the substitution of the Verge Framework with the ‘Futures triangle’, and (3) an asynchronous, digitally mediated format. These deviations are methodologically consequential. Dystopian SpF foregrounds technological futurity as an explicit object of reflection, enabling anticipatory critique rather than retrospective extrapolation. The ‘Futures triangle’ further structures this engagement by linking narrative interpretation to temporal forces shaping sociotechnical change. The asynchronous format redistributes interpretive authority by allowing participants to reflect independently and contribute at their own pace.

At the same time, the method is less suited for producing concrete policy recommendations or evaluating specific technologies. Its strength lies in early-stage reflection and sensemaking rather than decision-making. Recognizing these boundaries is essential for situating SpF-based approaches within the broader ecosystem of TA methods.

This study explored whether and how SpF-informed methods can enrich anticipatory TA. Findings indicate that such methods can (1) engage non-experts in futures reflection, (2) surface value-laden sociotechnical imaginaries, and (3) support anticipatory reasoning through narrative scaffolding.

Situated within participatory and constructive TA, the approach offers a structured yet low-barrier method through which non-expert participants can articulate values, concerns, and imaginaries before technologies, problems, or policy options become stabilized. Rather than assessing defined technologies or scenarios, it operates in a pre-technical phase, supporting pre-articulatory sensemaking when sociotechnical futures remain fluid and contestable.

Speculative fiction thus functions as a complementary TA practice suited to early-stage, uncertain, and ethically contested domains. It is not intended to replace established instruments such as impact assessment or scenario analysis, but to precede and enrich them by opening a culturally grounded space for anticipatory reflection. While participatory TA often relies on deliberative formats privileging rational argumentation, the SpF-informed approach expands the repertoire by eliciting narrative, moral, and emotional forms of anticipatory knowledge that conventional formats capture poorly.

While this study offers valuable insights, several limitations may have affected its validity and scope. First, self-selection bias likely influenced participation, as individuals already interested in speculative or critical perspectives on technology may have been more inclined to take part, skewing the findings toward more reflective or literate viewpoints. Second, the small sample size constrains the generalizability of the results, which should therefore be regarded as exploratory, contributing analytically and methodologically, instead of representative and aimed for statistical generalization. Third, the facilitator’s framing, including the selection of prompts, materials, and interpretive perspectives, may have subtly shaped participants’ responses and the overall direction of their reflections. Additionally, the asynchronous and individual format may have limited the depth of engagement, which might have been enriched through collective discussion or interaction. Finally, for participants unfamiliar with the digital platform (Miro), the interface may have presented a barrier, reducing ease of participation and potentially affecting the quality of contributions.