Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to advance the conceptual discussion in a future-oriented Anthropology through examining the potentialities and limits of future as an analytical concept in the ethnographic design as well as in fieldwork. Through co-envisioning with qualified tech workers imaginaries of AI.

Paper long abstract:

Future has arrived thickly in the anthropological agenda a few years ago. It has been a useful articulator for, on one hand, open up discussions about how we do ethnography and what we ask for to a contemporary Anthropology (Salazar et al, 2017). On the other hand, to propel a new range of analysis engaged with time orientation within the discipline ( Bryant and knight, 2019). Recently the future appears to be also a challenge in the ethnographic practice (Lanzeni and Waltorp, forthcoming). In this promising context of reshaping not also the temporalities in the anthropological methods but re-visiting some epistemological orientation in the practice of ethnography (Pink, 2017) emerges the opportunity to dig into how anthropologist conceptually intervene making ethnographic alliances with our stakeholders in what we research and how we 'complicate' the imagining of shared future at stake.

Building on it, this paper aims to advance the conceptual discussion in a future-oriented Anthropology through examining the potentialities and limits of future as an analytical concept in the methodological design of ethnography as well as in fieldwork.

To do this I bring ethnographic insights from co-envisioning with qualified tech workers from different stages of the design process of Internet of Things. Focusing on/Sketching the future of market labour in technological design from the imaginary of the dramatic changes that artificial intelligence-specifically machine learning- will bring. Adapting and absorbing the evolvement of emerging technologies and the expansion of AI-assisted tools and services into other domains.