Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, February 25, 2012

What Do Futurologists Do?

Futurologists are a science fiction fandom pretending to be philosophers and policy wonks in a bid for attention and, for a few, for money. Training in any real field of study provides a substantial expertise and unique analytic vocabulary out of which a circumscribed foresight worthy of attention emerges, but since futurologists are not trained in any real field of study at all the unmoored and overgeneralized “foresight” they perform for the public amounts either to the prophetic or gossipy utterances of a priestly pop guru maintaining a predatory relation to uncritical enthusiasts, or to the marketing and promotional noises of a pseudo-professional maintaining a parasitic relation to unscrupulous corporate-military elites. Futurological “scenarios” are usually just science fiction stories bereft of clever plots, interesting characters, or sustained themes. Indeed, most futurological “scenarios” amount to little more than stipulated settings of a scene (hence their name). Inevitably, these settings are borrowed from actual science fiction writers, and given the plausibility that attaches to the familiar, futurologists will tend to put a premium on precisely those settings real writers would disdain as cliches.

More Futurological Brickbats here.

1 comment:

jimf said...

> What Do Futurologists Do? . . .
>
> [T]hey perform for the public amounts either to
> the prophetic or gossipy utterances of a priestly
> pop guru maintaining a predatory relation to
> uncritical enthusiasts, or to the marketing and
> promotional noises of a pseudo-professional maintaining
> a parasitic relation to unscrupulous corporate-military
> elites.

You'll eat your words, Bunky. You just wait!

--------------------

"It’s this simple.

If it’s going to happen then it’s going to happen no matter
what the critics say… you can’t fight the future.
And remember, these critics are human too, with human fears
and failings, be aware that their words are easily
tainted by THEIR “beliefs”, hopes and fears (that last
one is surprisingly common).

Hard for us future-heads to believe, but many
people DO fear the future that peeps like Ray K describe."

-- "Metaman"
http://singularityhub.com/2010/07/01/john-horgan-criticizes-kurzweil-and-the-singularity-we-need-better-critics/

--------------------

"Keith. . . was virtually fanatic about the bedrock immanence
of money [as] the quantifying phenomenon of human life. . .
'As a unit of tender it is meaningless, and creeps toward
value only as a product of labor, which produces property,
which produces law, which produces the interdependence and
freedom of both laborers and proprietors interacting to
bring about a nation-state in conflict between rulers and
ruled, the latter bound to prevail, producing a classless
society in which population and state are the same thing.
A synthesis. You follow me?'

'Oh,' I said. 'I'm with you, sure, but I'm not quite
ready for the dialectical workout.'

He chuckled without a glimmer of mirth. 'You will be.' He
nodded gravely. 'You'll have to be. It's the future. Trust
in Marx. Then you'll see the big picture.' . . ."

-- _My Queer War_ (pub. Apr. 27, 2010)
by James Lord (1922-2009)
http://www.amazon.com/My-Queer-War-James-Lord/dp/0374217483