This paper situates the current iteration of artificial intelligence in a historical context to introduce the Technological Imaginary as a recent concept that can throw light upon why the technologies that we use have the form that they do. The Technological Imaginary is explored here in relation to the post-war development of AI in a summary of Accidental Machines to highlight the imaginary aspect of computer-based technological solutions to the creation of human intelligence. It concludes by suggesting how discussions of AI might benefit from recognizing the power of human agency in technological form and the visions for its future.

The paper abstracted here is about creativity. It proceeds from an understanding of the promise of the concept of cognitive innovation as a focus for collaboration between the sciences, arts and humanities. The value of the concept in this context lies in its approach to creativity as a boot-strapping cognitive process in which the energies that shape the poem are necessarily indistinguishable from those that shape the poet.

The authors argue that an interrogation of cinema can reveal the fragility of our knowledge and the underlying imperatives that the social construction of space responds to. A revisionist overview of the issue of professional interfaces in the popular arts is followed by a discussion of the influence of space technology and natural space phenomena on human personal and collective belief systems in order to open the way for an outline of the concept of participatory cultures and the relationship between fiction and science.