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Reference

Burø, T., & Christiansen, L. H. (2026). Tech will save us: The semiotic construction of utopian myth. Organization Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406261432836

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🎙️✨ Welcome to Revise and Resubmit, the podcast where we sit with ideas long enough to hear what they are really trying to say.

Some papers do not merely explain the world. They reveal the stories that have already explained it for us. This one begins in the glowing promise of technology, in the bright music of innovation, in the polished theater of entrepreneurial hope, and asks a question that feels almost impolite in its honesty: what if the future we are being sold is less a plan than a myth? 🌍⚡

Today, we turn to a remarkable new article, Tech will save us: The semiotic construction of utopian myth, by Thomas Burø and Laerke Højgaard Christiansen, published online on 06 March 2026 in Organization Studies 📘, one of the most prestigious journals in management and organization scholarship, and proudly part of the FT50 journal list. Published by SAGE Publications, this paper invites us into a world where technology does not simply innovate, but signifies, performs, and persuades.

Drawing on Roland Barthes and using multimodal semiotic analysis, the authors examine the promotional videos of TechBBQ, the largest tech event in the Nordics. And what they uncover is not just branding. It is something far more powerful. It is the careful construction of a utopian myth 🚀🌱, a story in which the tech ecosystem appears not only creative and dynamic, but morally destined to solve the grand challenges of our time, including climate change.

But myths do important work. They inspire hope. They create belonging. They elevate fields into agents of history. And, as this paper shows with striking clarity, they can also naturalize power, grant legitimacy, and allow organizations to claim ownership over society’s deepest problems without ever having to promise concrete action. That is what makes this study so compelling. It is not cynical, and it is not naïve. It is attentive to the seduction of possibility, and to the politics hidden inside that seduction. 🔍✨

So in this episode, we ask what happens when tech becomes not just an industry, but a salvation story. What kind of future is being imagined, who gets to author it, and what disappears when hope itself becomes a form of organization? 🤔

Before we begin, do subscribe to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify 🎧 and follow the YouTube channel Weekend Researcher ▶️. You can also find the show on Amazon Prime and Apple Podcast 🍎📺, so wherever you listen, stay with us and stay curious.

Our thanks to the authors, Thomas Burø and Laerke Højgaard Christiansen, and to SAGE Publications for bringing this important work into the world.

And now the question that lingers, quietly but insistently: when someone says tech will save us, are we hearing a solution, or are we hearing a myth? ✨