Hot air & corporate sociotechnical imaginaries: Performing and translating digital futures in the Danish tech scene

This article analyzes the role of hype in performing and translating corporate sociotechnical imaginaries of digital technologies, into the context of Danish society.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of technology events in Denmark, the paper proposes “hot air” as a concept to describe how hype for the future performs these imaginaries. The paper describes the overlapping sociotechnical imaginaries that dominate these events and the performative effects of hype and its critique, in articulating and translating them. The paper makes an empirical and conceptual contribution to the study of sociotechnical imaginaries, in particular their socio-material performance, the role of corporations in articulating them, and how hype is central to their translation.