‘In the future, as robots become more widespread’. A phenomenological approach to imaginary technologies in healthcare organisations
Abstract
This chapter discusses imaginary technologies that do not exist yet but are expected to be
implemented in clinical work in the near future. Adopting a phenomenological view on the politics of
organizational time, we illuminate how the rhetoric of futurity and protentional anticipation dominate
managerial acts in healthcare organizations. This future-oriented management includes strategies of
risk assessment, investments in emerging technologies, and other actions to reduce external
uncertainty and move towards an enhanced capacity to cope with potential challenges. However, we
suggest that potentially harmful consequences of emerging technologies cannot be established reliably
in advance by investigation, experiments, and risk assessments. The phenomenological notion of
embodied information infrastructure allows us to consider how visions of complex technologies
intertwine with clinical practices in healthcare professionals’ work. We use two examples of imaginary
technologies—automated decision-making systems and care robotics—to concretize how the line
between imaginary technologies and existing technologies becomes increasingly volatile in healthcare
organizations.