The Future is Boring: Stories from the landscapes of the mobile telecoms industry.

This paper weaves two stories of the future in the mobile telecoms industry, attentive to what is rehearsed and what is made absent. It follows the concerns of social studies of science and technology, in which futures and practices of future-making are always embodied and epistemologically situated; the future as a social and material activity of knowledge-making. The paper draws on a four month ethnography of the mobile telecoms industry but enacts two different methods: the first method is a reflective critique of the future in the industry; the second is a generative and inventive interference. The first method weaves a story around the lines of movement near London Heathrow airport, creating a linear, universal, and fixed future. The second method weaves a story around the island archipelago of Orkney, Scotland, to make a mutable, local, and fluid future. In this paper landscapes and futures are inseparable.