The future resides within the present: The mechanisms that frame digital futures from space-time-mind convergences and their application to the enactment of desirable (digital) futures

Abstract: Scholars have advanced inspiring initiatives from different prisms to grasp what digital futures (Schlagwein et al., 2025) might be. Beyond the pertinence of such advancement, it seems judicious to extend existing knowledge by probing how digital futures could take form and from what explicative mechanisms. This research elaborates a conceptual approach termed the space-time-mind (STM) convergence approach by drawing on the metaphysical thinking of Henri Bergson (Bergson, 1898, 1923, 1969) to address these questions. The contributions of this research are fourfold: 1) It provides a novel perspective to study digital futures by examining digital futures as digital-focused spatiotemporal representations residing within the future-purposed mind; 2) It discerns three mechanisms, which consist of the simultaneity, inter-patternability and inter-operability mechanisms that frame digital futures, by scrutinizing the intertwined connection between digital futures and digital presents; 3) It yields six research propositions to invite further research on digital futures from the proposed prism; 4) It provides empirical-related insights by applying its theoretical findings to the utilization of imagination in the enactment of desirable (digital) futures. This research ends by stipulating that the framing of digital futures remains a present occurrence given the ongoing nature of time flow, and that the construction of desirable futures, digital or not, does not depend on the future enhancement of digital technologies but on how we enact digital presents by integrating human expectation into the orientation of STM convergences that pattern (digital) futures.