Blood drones: using utopia as method to imagine future vital mobilities

ABSTRACT

How might we undertake life-saving vital mobilities, like moving blood, in future? Specifically, how might blood transfusion and drone technology – both war dividends – intersect? We explore four scenarios based on eclectic influences including cross-pollination between co-authors, a futures design workshop and exposure to science fiction. The scenarios are ‘ethnographic fragments’ from fictional futures, or conversely, imaginative time travel to possible futures. These are informed by and loosely correlate with established future-building scenario on the theme of carbon constraint: low-carbon society, digital lives, magic bullet technology and resource fights. Through the scenarios – Blood Bikes, HemoIkea, O Magic and Bloody Battles – we experiment with mobilizing utopia and dystopia as method to theorize vital mobilities. This experimental approach raises questions about possible and preferable futures of societal blood circulation and provokes a wider cultural imaginary surrounding blood and drone mobilities specifically, and vital mobilities generally.