Ten Futurological Admonitions

One: Enjoying science fiction is not the same thing as doing science or making science policy.

Two: Indulging in wish-fulfillment fantasies is not the same thing as analysis.

Three: Extrapolating from speculations and stipulations mistreated as factual data will yield serially failed predictions, few of which amount to foresight.

Four: There is nothing brave or useful or distinguished or progressive about saying magic would be cool if it were real, especially since there are so many real problems and real possibilities in the world that need our deliberation, bravery, pragmatism, special effort, and progressive struggle.

Five: Promoting as “experts” people with little training in professional or academic disciplines relevant to the topics on which they are declaiming, celebrating the “genius” of high-tech billionaires of no real distinction –- most of whom have simply appropriated the invention and effort of countless uncelebrated others -- and providing rationalizations for the "indispensability" of corporate-military elites who will presumably deliver us medical immortality, offer us nano-abundance, geo-engineer away our environmental catastrophes, and code for us godlike software parent-substitutes, is not even remotely the same thing as considering real insights, doing true philosophy, or making serious policy.

Six: Subcultures that remain very static, very small, very marginal, very megalomaniacal, and very defensive tend to look and conduct themselves more like cults than subcultures, even the ones that like to declare themselves consummately scientific.

Seven: People who buy a Volkswagon, an Apple computer, or Diesel Jeans aren’t actually joining a political movement no matter what advertising executives say to the contrary, nor are people who watch BSG marathons, write Janeway shipper fanfic, work on a Steampunk casemod, or enjoy CLAMP cosplay actually engaging in political agitation no matter how personally resonant and edifying their experiences may be or how interesting to ethnographers, nor are people who are invested in “The Future” of the futurologists -- which amounts in some respects precisely to such marketing phenomena and in others precisely to such fandom phenomena -- really joining or sustaining a political movement or engaged in political agitation in any remotely serious way.

Eight: “The Future” is not Narnia, it is not Middle Earth, it is not the United Federation of Planets, it is not Hogwarts, it is not utopia, it is not the Brave New World, it is not Heaven, it is not Hell, it is neither destiny nor destination, it is not even an "it" –- our futures will be shared presents attesting to stakeholder struggle just as this present is.

Nine: What we mean by life happens in biological bodies, what we mean by intelligence happens in biological brains and among animal societies, what we mean by progress happens in historical struggles among the diversity of living intelligent beings who share the present -- and to say otherwise is not to be interesting but to completely miss the point.

Ten: We are all vulnerable, we are all promising, we are all more ignorant than we need to be, we are all more capable than we can know, we are all error-prone, we are all interdependent, we are all subject to chance, and we are all going to die.

This post was adapted from one originally appearing on the blog Amor Mundi.