Worst. Singularity. Ever. aka how NOT to predict the future

2008-11-28

I usually go out of my way to praise things, not mock them. Sometimes I wonder if something is executed so poorly because it's a joke, or 'cuz it takes itself so seriously. I recently came across this FUTURE ENTERTAINMENT: THE CONVERGENCE OF FILM AND GAMING on Digg and was aghast for, oh, about 2 seconds before breaking out into giggles about how ridiculous it looks. If it's not a parody, I hope no one paid actual money (that would be wasteful).

Like Web 2.0, a lot of talk about "Convergence" and "The Singularity" is electronic snake oil, the high-tech equivalent of the scammers and charlatans in the self-help industry:

"gimme bux and i tell u futur!!!!!1 ROFL"

In a startling case of dummy text overload, my wife even noticed:

"It looks complex and professional until you look at the actual stuff on it."

And like the by-proxy damage a pseudoscientific quack does to actual scientists, this report is gonna confuse rational futurists with rancid jerksauce. But! Let me not taint your mind. Pollute yourself:

http://i36.tinypic.com/2uhmjyp.jpg

(That picture in the bottom-left should be a dude smashing his head into the screen, fed-up with vapid buzzword overload.)

As my earlier comment went: this, the Idiocracy interpretation of the Singularity, is bloated with awkward Engrish and cobbled from the entrails of a lot of Hollywood clichés we've seen over the years. (I wouldn't be so amused if some of it didn't closely resemble Cinco's philosophy from the Tim and Eric Awesome Show.)

Observations:

  • "Virtual and real world can't be different any more" — what the HECK does that even mean? I don't want to be around when they coin a buzzword.
  • "Video tattoos" sounds like a WORST CASE of far-flung spamdung.
  • You don't need to wait until 2011, "'Minority Report' style air displays" already happened!
  • "Audience gets used to violence" is really "US primetime TV".
  • "First bot gets human"? Is that referring to cross-species understanding, a wild night out on the town, or indentured servitude?
  • "Orgasm by email" and no mention of realtime teledildonics? I'm going to be a very sad time traveler.
    We already have "Avatar cosmetic surgery". It's called "Buying a new skin in Second Life". :p

I can forgive occasional typos, but this sheer abundance of gobbledygook, a Katamari ball of half-baked WTFness utterly spits, then vomits in the face of earnest prognostication.

Not to mention it also suspiciously neglects what's already happened, like, uh, virtual worlds today.

Now, I'm aware TrendONE is based in Germany. But that only shames this more, because I've seen many international reports put together with a greater sense of substance and style.

Gentle suggestion for improvement next time: less pie-in-the-sky handwaving, more attachment to current events.

THE FUTURE: if you can't deal with it, laugh at it.

Tagged as:

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Jean-Marie 2008-11-28 at 3:16 PM UTC

Wow, "Bot becomes a CEO of a major". I hope it's a joke ;-)

CyFishy Traveler 2008-11-28 at 3:35 PM UTC

Wait, "Narrative Games" just showed up in 2008? Just now?

Narrative games have been around since, cripes, text-based stuff back in the 80s. Infocom built a whole company on them. Douglas Adams wrote a couple of them. This is SO not anything new.

I'm in the process of writing a novel set in the far-flung future and what's embarrassing is how technology is catching up and surpassing the stuff I come up with. (Fortunately, it's not intended for publication, just for my own personal entertainment.)

Speedmaster Bing 2008-11-28 at 4:18 PM UTC

When I see, or hear, stuff similar to that it always reminds me of http://www.bullshitbingo.net/
Web 2.0 (I'm still waiting for my Service pack 1 to patch my intertubes) and cloud computing (Isn't Second Life per definition already running in "the cloud"?) seems to be the buzzwords today, covering up they are terms for old technology ;-)

Loraan Fierrens 2008-11-28 at 8:38 PM UTC

What a hoot. This is the sort of bullet-pointed nonsense I see at work all the time (although perhaps not quite this bad). I honestly don't know which part is the worst/funniest here. Maybe the "30 percent of all celebrities are synthetic" comment. What with botox and all, haven't we already reached that point? ;-)

More seriously though, this gets at something I've been concerned about at work for a while. Bullet points are _bad_. It's too easy to sit down and do a presentation with a mess of bullet points and have your audience walk away from it thinking they understood something. It's also too easy for those bullet points to be hiding the fact that there is no content in your presentation and no thought.

Torley 2008-11-29 at 12:19 PM UTC

@Jean-Marie: Me too, otherwise we're going to be living the future portrayed in the Terminator shows! (As in, Catherine Weaver as CEO of ZeiraCorp).

@CyFishy: Even accounting for drastically different interpretations of what a "narrative game" is, yes, you nailed it.

@Speedmaster: That's one of my fave games! Haha, "cloud computing" is one of my UNfavorites. It helps to label things to identify them easier, it's true. But no one deserves to attach meaning to emptiness.

@Loraan: Aye, without definitions and some clarity, it's just so grossly LOLarious. I wonder if this chart makes Edward Tufte, nemesis of bad PowerPoint, bawl his eyes out! Have you heard of him?

Leave a Comment