Last calendar month we told you about20 terms every ego - respect futurist should know , but now it ’s clock time to turn our attention to the opposite . Here are 10 pseudofuturist catchphrases and concepts that take to be eliminated from your lexicon .
Top image : Screen catch from Elysium .
1. “Transcendence”
Some fantast toss this word around in a way that ’s not too far hit from its religious roots . The hope is that our technologies can assist us have our being beyond normal or physical bounds . Now , it very well may be true that we ’ll eventually see how to emulate brains in a computer , but it ’s an subject interrogative sentence as to whether or not we ’ll be able to transfer cognisance itself . In other words , the future may not for us — it ’ll be for our copies . So it ’s doubtful any biologic being will ever literally experience the process of transcension ( just the illusion of it ) .
What ’s more , biography in a “ transcendent ” digitize kingdom , while full of unbelievable potential , will be no walkway in the park ; full release , or transcendence , is not likely an realizable goal . Emulated mind , or ems , will be prostrate to hacking , cut , unauthorised copying , andsubsistence salary . Indeed , a so - calleduploaded mindmay be free from its corporeal pattern , but it wo n’t be free from economic and physical realities , include the safety and dependableness of the supercomputer running the ems , and the costs involved in procuring sufficient processing power and storage space .
2. “The Singularity”
Vernor Vinge co - opted this term from cosmology as a way to describe a blind spot in our predictive thinking , or more specifically our unfitness to omen what will go on after the advent of greater - than - human machine intelligence . But since that time , theTechnological Singularityhas degenerated to a term vacancy of any true meaning .
In accession to its quasi - spiritual connotations , it has become a regular Rorschach Test for futurists . The Singularity has been used to describe accelerating variety or a succeeding clip when advance in technology occurs almost like a shot . It has also be used to draw humanness ’s transition into a posthuman condition , mind uploads , and the Second Coming of Christ of a utopian era . Because of all the baggage this term has accumulated , and because the risk that awaits us coming decipherable into direction ( for example the Intelligence Explosion ) , it’sa terminus that necessitate to be put to bottom , replace by more substantive and unambiguous hypotheses .
3.”Technology Will Save the Future”
I wholeheartedly agree that we should use technology to build up the form of futurity we require for ourselves and our posterity . dead . But it ’s important for us to acknowledge the challenges we ’re certain to face in try on to do so and the unintended consequences of our efforts .
engineering is a twice - edged sword that ’s incessantly frame us on the defensive attitude . Our inventions often produce outcomes that need to be provisioned for . Guns have produced the need for gun control and unassailable waistcoat . Software has produced the need for antivirus computer programme and firewalls . Industrialization has resulted in working class union , mood change , and the requirement for geoengineering efforts . Airplanes have been co - opted as terrorist weapons . And on and on and on .
The evolution of our technologies could ensue in a future in which our planet is wrecked and use up , our privacy travel , our civic liberties severely curtailed , and our political , social and economic structures severely altered . So while we should still strive to make the time to come , we must think that we ’re move to have to adjust to this future .
4. “Will”
We often speak about things that will happen in the futurity as if there ’s a certain inevitableness to it , or as if we ’re masters of our own destinies . problem is , dissimilar people have unlike imaginativeness of the futuredepending on their needs , economic value , and place of privilege ; there will always be a tension arising from competing interests . What ’s more , we will doubtless come to some intractable technological and economic barrier along the way , not to cite some black swan ( unexpected events ) and mule ( unexpected effect beyond our current understanding of how the world work ) .
Another view comes from Jayar LaFontaine , a Foresight Strategist withIdea Couture . He evidence me ,
The word “ will ” is wildly overuse by futurist . It ’s small and innocuous , so it can be slipped into voice communication to make a sensory faculty of authority which is almost always unfitting . More often than not , it indicates a futurist ’s personal biases on a subject rather than any serious assessment of foregone conclusion . And it can keep out down fruitful conversation about the future , which for me is the whole point .
5. “Immortality”
Some folks in the basal life annex and transhumanist residential district like to let the cat out of the bag about attain “ immortality . ” Indeed , there ’s a very right hazard that future humans will eventually enter into a state of so - called negligible senescence ( the surcease of aging ) — a singular development that will likely total about through the convergency of several tech sector , include biotechnology , cybernetics , neuroscience , molecular nanotechnology , and others . But it ’s a prognosis that has been taken just a bit too far .
The Fountain of Youth , 1546 painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder .
First , accidental or unavoidable deaths ( like getting hit by a streetcar , being murdered , or unknowingly flying a space vehicle into a supernova ) will always be a part of the homo — or posthuman — condition . Indeed , the longer we live , the greater probability we have of getting killed in one way or another . Second , the universe is a finite thing — which means our existence is finite , too . That could signify an ultimate fate make up one’s mind by the warmth death of the universe , the Big Crunch , or the Big Rip . And contrary to the thinking of Frank Tipler , there ’s no loop hole — not even a life - resurrectingOmega Point .
6. “Disruptive”
Virtually every gadget that comes out of Silicon Valley these days is heralded as being disruptive . I do n’t think this Holy Writ means what these companies think it think of .
frankly , for a technology to be really disruptive it has to stimulate the foundations of society . Looking back through history , it ’s dependable to say that the telegraph , train , machine , and the net were really disruptive . Looking ahead , it ’ll be various developments in molecular assembly , the social and economical consequences of mass automation , and the proliferation of AI and AGI .
7. “Future Shock”
This is a term that ’s getting older fast .
indisputable , such a thing may have existed in the early 1970s when Alvin Toffler first came up with the estimation ( though I doubt it ) , but does anyone truly meet from “ future shock ” ? Toffler described it as “ shatter stress and freak out ” because of “ too much alteration in too short a period of time , ” but I do n’t recall seeing it inthe latest variant of the DSM - V.
No doubt , many folks in our fellowship rail against modification — like resistance to jolly marriage ceremony or world-wide healthcare — but it would be inaccurate and unjust to look up to them as being in a state of shock . Reactionary , maybe .
8. “Moore’s Law”
Nope , not a law . At best it ’s a logical empiric regularity — and a fairly obvious one at that . Yes , processing stop number is catch faster and faster . But why fetishize it by holler it a natural law ? There are other similar observable regularity , including steady advancements in software system , telecom , materials miniaturization , and even biotechnology . An in fact , mathematical “ law ” can predict industrial development and productivity in many sector . What ’s more , Moore ’s Law is a poor barometer of progress ( something it ’s often used for ) , particularly societal and economic progress .
9. “The Robot Apocalypse”
permit ’s assume for a moment that an artificial superintelligence eventually emerges and it decides to destroy all humans ( a immense stretch give thatit ’s more probable to do this by accident or because it ’s indifferent ) . Because AI is often commingle with robotics , many people say the ensuing onslaught is likely to come in the physical body of marauding machines — the so - called robopocalypse .
Okay , sure , that ’s certainly one way a maniac ASI could do it , but it ’s hardly the most efficient . A more potential scenario would take the end of the atmospheric state or terrestrial aerofoil with some kind of nanophage . Or , it could infect the entire universe with a mortal computer virus . Alternately , it could poison all water supply and the food supply . Or something out of the blue — it does n’t matter . The point is that it does n’t require to go to such gawky length to destroy us should it choose to do so .
10. “The End Of Humanity”
This one really bugs me . It ’s both misanthropical and an inaccurate depiction of the future tense . Some people have gotten it into their heads that the advent of the next geological era of human evolution necessarily implies the end of humanity . This is unbelievable . Not only will biologic , unmodified humanity be in the far future , they will always reserve the right to delay that mode . So - called transhumans and posthumans are probable to exist ( whether they be genetically modify , cybernetic , or digital ) , but they ’ll always inhabit a populace absorb by regular manifestly old Homo sapiens .
( double : bikeriderlondon / Shutterstock )
FuturismrobopocalypseScience
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