Predict the Present • Doubleshot

I recently got a notification on a post I put up a long time ago, in which I quoted Tom Boellstorff in Coming of Age in Second Life. I'd forgotten about the original post, but its bubbling back to the top of my mind proved timely. The quote said, “The goal of foreseeing an unknowable future leads to misunderstandings of the present.”

It's one of those quotes I come back to over and over, especially right now as we see a continuous river of predictions around AI and technological development broadly.

The pace at which people—particularly those with a material interest in being right—are pumping out predictions makes me think about the whole business of predicting the future in the first place. Conference talks, essays, press releases, and interviews are frequently pitched as “on the future of _____.”

But why? Is it just our need to feel a sense of certainty about where things are headed? Is it wishcasting on the part of the predictors? Or is there something more behind the desire to know the future (or speak it into existence)?

This line of thinking is what inspires this issue of Doubleshot. Let’s get started.