# Event Details - **Event Name**: Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure - **Event Start and End Date**: Wed, 25 Mar, 2026 at 04:00 pm – Wed, 25 Mar, 2026 at 05:00 pm - **Event Description**: Dive into how sci-fi stories shape and fuel the future’s tech and infrastructure in this hands-on meetup!About this EventThe Centre for Business and Society at the Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge are happy to invite you to one of two research seminars in March with Dr Ali Rıza Taşkale. Taking place on our Cambridge campus in room LAB 216, 16:00-17:00TitleMaterialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure for Corporate Power and GovernanceAbstractThis talk introduces “materialized science fiction” as a framework for understanding a fundamental transformation in how corporate power operates today. Tech elites are no longer content with disrupting markets; they are systematically redesigning governance, labor relations, and civic infrastructure by converting speculative narratives into concrete business models and political projects.Drawing on cases from Palantir’s surveillance capitalism to Musk’s Mars colonization ventures, I examine how figures like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Jeff Bezos engage in strategic “looting” of the science fiction archive. They extract aesthetics and power fantasies - frontier myths, libertarian governance, techno-solutionism - while deliberately discarding the genre’s critiques of corporate feudalism and social inequality. This selective reading transforms dystopian warnings into investment prospectuses and organizational blueprints.The result is what I call “reactionary futurism”: a business ideology that uses the language of innovation to justify the dismantling of democratic oversight, labor protections, and environmental regulations. By framing corporate ambitions as technologically inevitable, Silicon Valley converts choices - about workplace surveillance, algorithmic management, urban privatization - into foregone conclusions that bypass stakeholder participation and public deliberation.This matters for business and society because the “hype economy” now operates as a form of narrative capital that shapes which futures receive funding, regulatory approval, and social legitimacy. From “smart cities” that enable unprecedented surveillance to AI systems that codify bias as optimization, the materialized science fictions of today determine the governance structures, labor conditions, and civic possibilities of tomorrow.The central question for business scholars and practitioners is not whether speculative visions will shape organizational reality - that process is already underway - but whose materializations will prevail, and what democratic mechanisms can ensure that corporate futures serve societal needs rather than elite fantasies.BioAli Rıza Taşkale is External Lecturer at Roskilde University’s Department of Social Sciences and Business. He recently completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022-2025) examining how financial and technological elites weaponize speculative narratives to legitimize new organizational forms and governance models. His research bridges cultural economy, science fiction studies, and science and technology studies, with publications in International Political Sociology, Urban Studies, Theory, Culture & Society, and Global Studies Quarterly. Recent work includes “Manufacturing the Leviathan” in Science as Culture, analyzing Palantir’s corporate ideology and the forthcoming monograph Fictional Worlds and Financial Realities in Speculative Literature and Film (Palgrave, 2026). He serves on the editorial board of Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory and contributes to public debates on tech oligarchy, corporate governance, and speculative finance and fiction.________________________________________________________________________________Microsoft Teams Need help?Meeting ID: 337 997 421 410 05Passcode: 2yF9P5FADial in by phone+44 20 7660 8200,,687173697# United Kingdom, City of LondonFind a local numberPhone conference ID: 687 173 697#For organizers: Meeting options | Reset dial-in PIN - **Event URL**: https://allevents.in/cambridge/materialized-science-fiction-speculative-narratives-as-infrastructure/100001981564734463 - **Event Categories**: Meetups, Art, Business, Entertainment, Sports, Workshops, fine-arts, literary-art - **Interested Audience**: - total_interested_count: 0 ## Ticket Details - **Ticket Price Range**: min: 0, max: 0, currency: GBP ## Event venue details - **city**: Cambridge - **state**: EN - **country**: United Kingdom - **location**: ARU Cambridge - **lat**: 52.20328689999999 - **long**: 0.1344584 - **full address**: ARU Cambridge, East Road, Cambridge, United Kingdom ## Event gallery - **Alt text**: Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure - **Image URL**: https://dyn-image.allevents.in/generate-image?v=4&title=Materialized+Science+Fiction%3A+Speculative+Narratives+as+Infrastructure&date=Wed%2C+25+Mar%2C+2026+at+04%3A00+pm&bg=4 ## FAQs - **Q**: When and where is Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure being held? - **A:** Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure takes place on Wed, 25 Mar, 2026 at 04:00 pm to Wed, 25 Mar, 2026 at 05:00 pm at ARU Cambridge, East Road, Cambridge, United Kingdom. - **Q**: Who is organizing Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure? - **A:** Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure is organized by ARU FBL. ## Structured Data (JSON-LD) ```json [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Event", "name": "Materialized Science Fiction: Speculative Narratives as Infrastructure", "image": "https://dyn-image.allevents.in/generate-image?v=4&title=Materialized+Science+Fiction%3A+Speculative+Narratives+as+Infrastructure&date=Wed%2C+25+Mar%2C+2026+at+04%3A00+pm&bg=4", "startDate": "2026-03-25", "endDate": "2026-03-25", "url": "https://allevents.in/cambridge/materialized-science-fiction-speculative-narratives-as-infrastructure/100001981564734463", "location": { "@type": "Place", "name": "ARU Cambridge", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "East Road", "postalCode": "CB1 1PT", "addressLocality": "Cambridge", "addressRegion": "EN", "addressCountry": "GB" }, "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": "52.20328689999999", "longitude": "0.1344584" } }, "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode", "description": "Dive into how sci-fi stories shape and fuel the future’s tech and infrastructure in this hands-on meetup!", "offers": [ { "@type": "AggregateOffer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "GBP", "availabilityStarts": "2026-08-26", "availabilityEnds": "2026-03-25", "validFrom": "2026-08-26", "lowPrice": "0.00", "highPrice": "0.00", "price": "0.00", "url": "https://allevents.in/cambridge/materialized-science-fiction-speculative-narratives-as-infrastructure/100001981564734463" }, { "@type": "Offer", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock", "priceCurrency": "GBP", "availabilityStarts": "2026-08-26", "availabilityEnds": "", "validFrom": "2026-08-26", "url": "https://allevents.in/cambridge/materialized-science-fiction-speculative-narratives-as-infrastructure/100001981564734463", "price": 0, "name": "General Admission" } ], "organizer": [ { "@type": "Organization", "name": "ARU FBL", "url": "https://allevents.in/org/aru-fbl/24023593", "description": "Anglia Ruskin University - Faculty of Business and Law" } ] } ] ```