Abstract

We examine portrayals of active and bicycle mobility in speculative fiction---highlighting the diverse ways in which authors have envisioned the intersection of interactive technologies and mobility tools, as well as how they diverge from contemporary bikeHCI research. The adoption of active mobility has deep health and sustainability implications, however the integration of novel interactive systems with both new and existing transportation modalities raises complex social and technical concerns. Speculative fiction provides rich and contrasting visions of the future of active mobility, while also capturing the zeitgeist around the collision of digital technologies with traditionally-analog forms of transport. We analyzed 106 text-based fictions, coding their key mobility-related technologies, data, interactions, and themes. We also examine how speculative futures in our corpus (which tend to center feminist and queer perspectives) relate to current trends in bikeHCI research and discuss potential new directions for active mobility tech.

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