What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction

This article addresses the deliberately speculative question of ‘What might the school of 2030 be like?’, with a specific focus on the influences of digital technologies. The article adopts the methodological approach of ‘social science fiction’ to explore the ways in which digital technologies might be used in one Australian high school in 2030 (Lakeside), and what this might mean for the people whose lives are enmeshed with these technologies. Through the co-construction of five social science fiction ‘vignettes’ about life within Lakeside, the article considers the increasing prevalence of dataveillance, digital deskilling and the de-territorialization of schooling. The article then goes on to consider changing relationships between time/place, material and coded structures, as well as the increasingly platformized and data-driven nature of schooling in the 2020s. The article ends by considering the ways in which critical scholars can continue to use the methodological approach of social science fiction writing with regard to unpacking the politics of digital education futures.