Anticipating airpocalypse: Air quality apps and implicit modes of anticipatory practices

Abstract

Air quality apps are designed to observe air quality and inform publics about it, but also to elicit actions based on anticipated scenarios. As such, they may be seen as anticipatory technologies, cultivating environmental understandings and orienting users toward a specific future. This paper explores the anticipatory assemblages of these apps as well as users’ interactions with these apps and their implicit anticipatory practices. We argue that the assemblage of human and non-human actors that constitutes air quality apps presents air pollution as divorced from human action. Furthermore, proposed actions against air pollution accounted for in air quality apps may not be attuned to the diverse contexts of the users, such as less affluent actors. Moreover, apps have world-making powers, as users follow the advice and actions the apps provide, implicitly contributing to the vision of the future the apps present. The field of future studies thereby has a role to play in emphasizing implicit modes of anticipatory practices and their embeddedness in everyday items and actions.