future-oriented-prediction
The use of speculative forecasts about technology and society serves as a rhetorical strategy to naturalize elite interests and deflect accountability for present inequalities.
1 chapter across 1 book
Winners Take All (2018)Anand Giridharadas
Chapter 3 of "Winners Take All" examines the culture and contradictions of MarketWorld elites, particularly those in Silicon Valley, through the lens of the Summit at Sea conference. It highlights how entrepreneurs and venture capitalists espouse a gospel of doing well by doing good, while simultaneously contributing to widening inequality and using future-oriented predictions to mask their power and self-interest. The chapter focuses on Shervin Pishevar as a case study of how tech elites frame their influence as noble and inevitable, even as their actions reinforce social stratification.