"On the 29th march 2084 the robot presenter of TV Galactica was programmed to celebrate in the following terms:" "the 200th anniversary of the 1884 law and inception of the trade union movement." "You were quite perplexed to receive a film dedicated to the 100th anniversary of trade and imagined that it would last a century longer." "Undoubtedly somewhat crushed by the difficulty and perhaps by the fear of saying things about where they were at, they instead browsed their machine so as to ask themselves where they will be." "The question could only take the form of a hypothesis" "They identified three possibilities, each one designated by a colour, and articulated around certain words collected during a preceding investigation:" ""What do you not like?"" ""I don't like folklore Politics... some types of politics talking for the sake of it stereotypes, rigid things the monotony of the unions and demonstrations.... they're pretty dismal."" "Grey is the crisis hypothesis a crisis from which one can't escape." "The welfare system allows attenuation of its effects, but the imagination is exhausted." "When all one's energy is required to stay afloat there is hardly anything left to invent the future." "Of course the crisis deteriorates until there is an explosion, either social or nuclear." "There the line of thought comes to an end, because perhaps there could be a scorpions' union but let's say that's less relevant to us." "Most probably in this hypothesis there is a society of little happiness, that provides itself with false security and the hope of a stability which is always under threat." "In this case the union is at best a powerful protective organization efficient in its own way which uses up to date methods so as to manage your interests, guarantee employment and assure you the greatest comfort." "That type of union will not invent another type of society;" "society remains as it is, the well-to-do are still there as are the excluded, marginales que deberían normalizarse but it is a union which has power against the bosses, bankers and power - whatever that power may be." "It also has traditions which it maintains because the nostalgia for the past is handy as a substitute for that nostalgia for the future that in other times was called revolution." "Then the union ceremony **" "There are lots of congresses, meetings, parades, slogans, but how boring!" ""What don't you like?"" ""Death the 'newspaper of record' racism contempt fear."" "But there is worse." " There is always worse" "This is the black hypothesis, it could be fascism or maybe stalinism we know it already and so in a certain way it was less dangerous it was predictable." "what was less so, was that techniques of power would replace ideology." "This technology: who should control it, own it, benefit from it?" "Who should control its evolution?" "This was what was at stake, the great question at the end of the century." "Not having understood these stakes in time, the government of this future was left in the hands of a new species of manager:" "the techno-totalitarians." "We paid a heavy price they remembered the great workers revolts of the 80s and 90s, and their repression." "They are talked about now with the same condescension used to describe the textile workers who threw the first machines into the street in the 19th century." "Progress was not brought to the poor but to those who had shown it to them." "Today everything is going fine nothing is lacking effort, pollution, waiting in line, aggression" " all are things from an age now past." "You have more images in your home than the eyes can take in." "What use is an independent press, radio or TV another source of information to choose, reflect upon, or become indignant about." "But indignation too is a thing from a time past." "The state is a well-oiled nourishing machine, and the union its mechanic, there to spot faults and trouble-shoot, unable even to imagine that the machine could be used for something else." "Of trade unionism nothing remains but the name" "Real unionism died at the dawn of the 21st century." "drawing its strength from mistaking its opponent pitting sector against sector, natives against immigrants, men against women, organization against organization." "The inheritors of the workers movement ended up losing once and for all the confidence of a class where they were already a minority." "The bolts thrown in the workshops in the winter of 1984 travelled far and finished up smashing the very image of union organization." "The techno-totalitarians had only to pick up the pieces." "Third hypothesis" ""What do you like?"" ""I like creation, novelty"" "...reflection, doubt archery dialogue, reflection love humour wide spaces rock to be respected, to learn, and teach others cinema enthusiasm."" "We needed a colour, and we decided on the blue hypothesis, but with caution, the bolt from the blue tomorrow which sings leaves us feeling foolish." "To only imagine a tomorrow which would not be completely catastrophic but exactly in this period of great truths it's rather healthy to imagine other things for example one way of acquiring new certainties is to learn to doubt together." "This famous technology need not necessarily mean what we thought:" "a new and particularly sinister form of power." "It begins to reveal itself as a fabulous force for the transformation of the world, and this includes the struggle against hunger, sickness, suffering, against ignorance and intolerance." "It is still a struggle but now in terms born of the 21st and not the 19th century" "So what the robotic presenter of 2084 could say might be this" ""Fundamentally the 20th century didn't exist it was just a long and interminable transition from barbarism to culture." "In the 80s those who still felt anger at the poverty and injustice of industrial society were right, those who posed the hope of a different and new society were right as well." "The role of the unions was to create a bridge between the rage and the hope;" "they were an instrument of this new struggle, the place where different imaginations met to create new forms of solidarity, where people sought with others how to live together without feeling diminished or damaging each other, how to make good use of their differences how best to master time" "It was a union which sought not to impose a dogmatic view, but put people in contact with each other, and with ideas and facts to facilitate individual projects" "Ideas began to love." ""Idea = challenge"" ""Pass me the cutter?"" "Good, computer science also has its things and this is just our way of celebrating the centenary of trade unionism speaking not of what unionism has done but what it has still to do" "Nothing is programmed" "We have all three hypotheses in front of us and some others." "The robotic presenter of 2084 is not programmed in advance either:" "we program him day in, day out," "He will say what we tell him if we know how to do it." "And provided we hurry a little it'll take just a century."