Table 2 Effect codes grouped into categories, with examples, number of occurrences and percentages of positive and negative framings
From: Young people’s technological images of the future: implications for science and technology education
Category | Code | Example | n | % pos/neg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Everyday life (40%) | Convenience & everyday life | robots will make our daily lives easier | 53 | 78 / 2 |
Interaction, social life | there is technology that helps me live a socially active life | 33 | 65 / 18 | |
One's surroundings | there are screens or reflections of ads and news everywhere | 24 | 67 / 4 | |
Chores, housekeeping | Unless I wanted to, I would not have to do anything to maintain my house | 19 | 90 / 0 | |
Time-saving | Thanks to artificial intelligence and automation, people also have more free time | 12 | 92 / 0 | |
Mobility, location-independence | it would be easy for the inhabitants to move from one place to another | 12 | 83 / 0 | |
Society (28%) | Equality, rights, divisions | wealthier nations will benefit more from new technologies (…), inequality will increase | 24 | 50 / 38 |
Privacy, cybersecurity | privacy loss (…) could result from large-scale digitalisation | 17 | 24 / 53 | |
Stability, safety, security | Travelling in robotic vehicles can be risky | 13 | 62 / 23 | |
Embeddedness, cultural shifts | technology becomes integrated into everyone’s lives in the future | 11 | 36 / 27 | |
Availability of information | All the information about whatʼs happening around us is very real-time | 10 | 40 / 10 | |
Politics, power, democracy… | society’s main problems relate to legal matters revolving around IT software | 10 | 40 / 50 | |
Economy (exc. job market) | Finland has developed into a global leader in the technology sector | 9 | 78 / 22 | |
Work & skills (23%) | Work, job market | machines have replaced people in most jobs | 44 | 50 / 27 |
Own career | I work in a health care technology company | 18 | 89 / 11 | |
Skills | we need more knowledgeable people who can (…) programme instructions for the robots | 17 | 47 / 35 | |
Education | High-quality education is available to everyone (…) through distance learning courses | 8 | 50 / 25 | |
Wellbeing & enjoyment (16%) | Physical wellbeing, longevity | my clothes may need to cool my body down or protect me from UV radiation | 18 | 89 / 0 |
Need to ‘unplug’; tech-free spaces | It is important to me to not spend my entire life surrounded by machines | 14 | 14 / 29 | |
Passivity, tech addiction, mental health | society’s major concerns include people becoming passive consumers of entertainment | 11 | 23 / 69 | |
Happiness, quality of life | technology gives me more ways to fulfil myself (…) and be happy | 8 | 78 / 0 | |
Enjoyment, hedonism | many applications and objects that bring the greatest possible enjoyment to everyone | 11 | 92 / 0 | |
Sustainability & risks (17%) | Environment | The technology would be used to replace polluting things in our society | 52 | 92 / 2 |
Catastrophes, major risks … | potential nuclear wars and (…) using technology to (…) create large-scale disasters. | 14 | 7 / 71 | |
‘Direction of progress’ (9%) | Progress, hope, universal good, etc | humanity would have evolved towards a better future with the help of technology | 17 | 88 / 0 |
Overtechnologisation | with the advancement of technology and electronics, we might lose our humanity | 16 | 19 / 50 |