Predictions of the Future, Concerns of the Present: Ideology and Imaginary in Ted Talk Narratives about the Future of Work

Assunto

Appadurai, in his work on the future as a cultural fact (2013), presents an anthropological approach that situates the practices of predicting the future in history and culture. According to the author, predicting the future has been motivated by people’s fears and concerns since the distant past, with the aim of anticipating measures to avoid catastrophes, save crops, and plan their own lives. As societies develop, the future also becomes a factor of planning and rationality. In contemporary capitalist culture, the future is a commodity that corresponds to this human demand. This is the characteristic of the object of this study, the futuristic narratives of TED Talks, the global lecture event whose current slogan is “ideas change everything”. We selected the TED narratives that deal with the future of work, since the category of work is central to the organization of the capitalist system. At the same time, it is one of the main themes of critical studies carried out by the social sciences, since the seminal work of Karl Marx. Our goal is to critically understand the future scenarios for work produced by TED speakers, and their ideological consequences and implications. The methodology applied is based on Marc Angenot's theory of social discourse. Among the main results, we highlight the predominance of narratives about the future identified with what Appadurai (2013) calls the ethics of probabilities. This ethics corresponds to projections that colonize the future through the calculations, projects, and logic of neoliberal society (Dardot; Laval, 2016). Keywords: narratives; future; work; discouse; ideology; neoliberal capitalism.