Reductio ad deus is a recurring pattern, or at least it was, when we look hopefully into a radical future.
Radical political movements develop messianic themes, whether or not they rejected pre-existing ideas of god. Modern futurists are distinctly messianic. Remember also that (radical) 19th century politics kind of were futurist movements. "Singularity" is an on-the-nose example.
^Radical meaning "want or expect major societal change."
I think we're better at predicting the future than we give ourselves credit for. We're just bad at distinguishing profound from banal in those futures. 100 years ago, economists and intellectuals (famously keynes) used their projections of productivity, technology & such to predict a leisure society. 15hr workweeks, etc.
They were right about almost everything, except the conclusions. Productivity, global trade, technology, even peace... eventually. Even with the benefit of hindsight, very few modern economists reach profound conclusions about the mistakes of their forebears.
The way we usually get the future wrong is "you were right, an yet..."
The cultural element is the wild card. In 1990 you could have predicted 2020's radically changed landscape of media, social media, communication technologies & such. You probably couldn't have predicted the memetic influence on, the economy, education, social life, etc... At least, people usually don't predict these well.
Radical political movements develop messianic themes, whether or not they rejected pre-existing ideas of god. Modern futurists are distinctly messianic. Remember also that (radical) 19th century politics kind of were futurist movements. "Singularity" is an on-the-nose example.
^Radical meaning "want or expect major societal change."
I think we're better at predicting the future than we give ourselves credit for. We're just bad at distinguishing profound from banal in those futures. 100 years ago, economists and intellectuals (famously keynes) used their projections of productivity, technology & such to predict a leisure society. 15hr workweeks, etc.
They were right about almost everything, except the conclusions. Productivity, global trade, technology, even peace... eventually. Even with the benefit of hindsight, very few modern economists reach profound conclusions about the mistakes of their forebears.
The way we usually get the future wrong is "you were right, an yet..."
The cultural element is the wild card. In 1990 you could have predicted 2020's radically changed landscape of media, social media, communication technologies & such. You probably couldn't have predicted the memetic influence on, the economy, education, social life, etc... At least, people usually don't predict these well.