Divari di immaginazione. Digitale, creatività e giovani generazioni nell’era dell’intelligenza artificiale

Abstract

This article proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting the relationship between future imaginaries, digital practices, and conditions of participation among younger generations. Drawing on the sociology of time, sociotechnical imaginaries, and digital inequality studies, it argues that the capacity to imagine alternative futures is not a spontaneous individual disposition, but a socially and culturally situated competence, unequally distributed along structural lines. The digital environment – and artificial intelligence in particular – has become a key terrain on which this inequality is enacted: those with adequate cultural, symbolic, and formative resources can use digital tools for expression, meaning-making, and civic engagement, while those without them are subjected to imaginaries built elsewhere. The article examines this dynamic across three interconnected dimensions: the sociology of future-oriented anticipation and Futures Literacy as a learnable capacity; sociotechnical imaginaries and the contested symbolic field of artificial intelligence; and digital competences as a structural condition of access to collective imaginaries, reframing the digital divide as a divide of imagination. The concluding paragraphs examine the relationship between youth creativity and generative artificial intelligence, showing how the symbolic asymmetries that run through cultural production are redefined – without dissolving – within the algorithmic environment. They also interrogate the role of educational institutions as spaces in which young people’s capacity to imagine, create, and act can be either cultivated or further compressed.