The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies on the world of work is often framed in terms of broad, universal consequences. But to what extent do such narratives overlook the everyday negotiations, contestations, and adaptations through which technology is actually integrated into professional life? Prevailing perspectives tend to downplay human agency, instead attributing technological change to an abstract and often deterministic notion of economic or technological agency. In contrast, this paper examines how professionals at the forefront of digitalisation—particularly those in the digital and creative industries, including architects, designers, programmers, CEOs, and COOs—make sense of generative AI’s incorporation into their daily work. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews, we highlight how AI adoption is not merely a matter of large-scale structural transformation but unfolds through subtle, often contested, micro-level organisational shifts.

By situating these insights within the broader discourse on technological change, we challenge and problematise three key perspectives that have shaped scholarly and policy-oriented understandings of digitalisation’s effects on labour markets. First, the Skill Biased Technical Change (SBTC) hypothesis suggests that technological advancements primarily benefit highly skilled workers, fostering an overall upskilling of the workforce. Second, the Routine Biased Technological Change (RBTC) perspective points to job polarisation, whereby routine-based middle-wage occupations—regardless of skill level—are increasingly displaced by automation. Finally, a third, more disruptive perspective envisions a future in which AI and robotics extend beyond routine tasks to replace even highly qualified professionals, raising concerns about large-scale structural unemployment.

Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), sociology of expectations, and labour market sociology, we demonstrate that the impact of AI is not uniform. Instead, technological change is socially embedded and contingent upon a range of organisational imaginaries and interactional dynamics. Our findings reveal that the integration of AI is shaped by workplace negotiations in which professionals redefine and contest its role, often navigating tensions between creativity and efficiency. By shifting analytical focus from broad systemic shifts to the lived realities of AI adoption, this article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of digitalisation in practice and challenges deterministic narratives that portray technological transformation as an inevitable trajectory. In doing so, we provide insights relevant to policymakers, business leaders, and scholars seeking to better understand the future of work in an era of AI-driven change.

This article discusses audiowalks as mobile locative media and raises issues around how to analyze such hybrid and situated aesthetic and narrative experiences. We employ sensory ethnographies coupled with post-phenomenological concepts to present a mode of analysis that captures the relationality between the technological and embodied aspects of the experiences. Audiowalks and similar hybrid experiences are created and experienced through several media formats (text, image, sound) and exist in between and across several aesthetic traditions and genres (literature, art, music). The case that we analyze in the article uses mobile media to distribute locative digital experiences that are intimately tied to geographical places: Ellen Reid’s SOUNDWALK is a GPS-enabled work of public art that uses music to illuminate the natural environment (and can be found in several cities currently). We suggest that a situated awareness is needed to critically analyze works such as this, and that sensory ethnographic approaches in combination with multistability created by technology can be adapted to suit such an analysis. We wish to broaden the scope of such methods by moving beyond the study of individuals and their activities to also include the relationship between locative media and aesthetic experiences that they engage with as users/readers/listeners of audiowalks.

The annual South-by-Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX, gathers technology experts, innovators, artists, and policymakers showcasing emerging trends in their fields. This event not only celebrates technological advancements and industry success but also embraces alternative, wellness-oriented paths, challenging the paradigms of tech-driven work practices with experiences that include psychedelic exploration, immersive technologies used for aesthetic purposes, and other sensory practices. This juxtaposition reflects a broader tension: the allure of progress versus a growing concern over unsustainable work models accentuated by the rise of generative AI and new digital workflows.

This study employs a mixed-method approach, including digital and sensory ethnography, to analyze SXSW's 2022, 2023, and 2024 editions. It considers SXSW’s impact on reshaping work culture by fostering social innovation and lifestyle experimentation. The research captures how SXSW has become a tastemaker for reimagining work-life narratives that prioritize sensory and embodied experiences, countering the prevailing digital monotony.

SXSW's dual focus creates a dynamic dialogue between the excitement for digital futures and a critical view that questions the sustainability of such futures, underscoring the need for well-being and genuine human connections. Through its findings, this paper contributes to the discourse on the future of work by highlighting narratives around human-centric digital work environments.

The paper studies these alternative future projections in which innovation is harmonized with our innate need for wellness and purpose where technology serves to enhance, rather than dictate, the contours of our lives.

This paper discusses the "Collaborative Foresight" process, which is an initiative organized by the authors in partnership with Media Evolution, a Swedish organization based in Malmö. The foresight cycle in focus aimed to explore potential futures of work with emerging AI technologies by engaging a diverse group of experts and community members in forecasting and “futuring” activities, following the methodology offered by Media Evolution. The authors actively participated in this cycle, which allowed for a thorough examination of the methodologies utilized in such foresight exercises.

At the heart of our investigation is the dynamic tension between "future-makers" - those actively shaping possible futures, and "future-takers" - individuals adapting to these projected scenarios. Our study explores how the interplay and evolving tensions between these roles are influenced by the structure of foresight practice and the facilitator's practices. We investigate how this approach fosters a participatory environment where participants are encouraged to not only predict but also contribute actively to the creation of future work paradigms within the boundaries of the foresight cycle structure.

Our analysis focuses on the methodology of the foresight cycle, highlighting its role as a facilitative and inhibitory tool that requires participants to oscillate between the imaginative realms of future-making and the practicalities of future-taking. The research illuminates the importance of questioning initiatives such as collaborative foresighting and their role in shaping industry narratives about the future of work.

Immersive technologies seem destined to promise us a different reality than the one we currently inhabit. Whether in advertising, at tech conferences, or in individual creators' descriptions of their work, the allure of a metaverse, a digital twin reality, or a new horizon seems everpresent. Augmented (AR), Virtual (VR), Extended (XR), or Mixed (MR): these reality media technologies intertwine mediations and representations in a manner that seem to call for intermedial reflections. Based in a series of examples from designers, artists and filmmakers, I will talk about the complexities of immersive media, and how intermedial perspectives can be part of a critical understanding of these media forms and their place in the contemporary media landscape. I argue that generative AI infused or created media objects form part of what can be called agentic media.

In this paper, we treat VR as a new writing space in the long tradition of inscription. Constructing Virtual Reality (VR) narratives can then be understood as a process of inscribing text in space, and consuming them as a process of "reading" the space. Our research objective is to explore the meaning-making process afforded by spatial narratives-to test whether VR facilitates traditional ways of weaving complex, multiple narrative strands and provides new opportunities for leveraging space. We argue that, as opposed to the linear space of a printed book, a VR narrative space is similar to the physical space of a museum and can be analyzed on three distinct levels: (1) the architecture of the space itself, (2) the collection, and (3) the individual artifacts. To provide a deeper context for designing VR narratives, we designed and implemented a testbed called RealityMedia to explore digital remediations of traditional narrative devices and the spatial, immersive, and interactive affordances of VR. We conducted task-based user study using a VR headset and follow-up qualitative interviews with 20 participants. Our results highlight how the three semantic levels (space, collection, and artifacts) can work together to constitute meaningful narrative experiences in VR.

I en tid då medielandskapet är i ständig förändring och traditionell medieforskning konstant utmanas ökar behovet av att förena teknik, humaniora och samhällsvetenskap. Medie- och teknikforskning kräver innovativa angreppssätt för att navigera bland komplexa relationer mellan kultur, samhälle, ekonomi och teknologi.

I den här boken bjuder ledande forskare in till samtal om teknologins utmaningar och möjligheter. Här presenteras redskap för att utforska, beskriva, begreppsliggöra och förstå nya relationer mellan medieteknologier och deras omvärld – en kunskap som förbereder läsaren att på egen hand kombinera samhällsvetenskapernas kritiska analyser med teknikvetenskapernas tradition att utveckla tillförlitliga och effektiva system.

Tekniska mediestudier riktar sig till studenter inom ämnen som medieteknik, medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, kulturvetenskap, data- och systemvetenskap, interaktionsdesign och informatik.