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

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Futurology Defined

The futurological in my sense of the term is an ideological formation; it is essentially a marketing discourse amplifying the profits and authority of incumbent elites by mobilizing seductive and reassuring techno-transcendental wish-fulfillment fantasies in the form of unaccountable, apparently predictive, promissory, or even prophetic utterances in which the deceptive, hyperbolic norms and forms of promotion and advertising already suffusing our public life take on the coloration and intensity of outright organized religiosity: for example, in the guiding narratives of mainstream corporate-military think-tanks, in popular consumer fandoms for Apple products or celebrity CEOs, or in marginal futurist subcultures like transhumanism.

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