future (adj.) late 14c., “that is yet to be; pertaining to a time after the present,” from Old French futur “future, to come” (13c.), from Latin futurus “going to be, yet to be,” as a noun, “the future,” irregular suppletive future participle of esse “to be,” from PIE root *bheue- “to be, exist, grow.” In grammar, of tense, from 1520s.¹

What is Futurism

The term “futurism” is associated with a 20^th century movement in the fine arts. A contemporary definition is quite different could refer to a religious or spiritually-tinged practices of diving truths via tarot cards, cleromancy rituals, psychic divination, or astrology charts. A modern definition usually refers to the kinds of well-educated, broad, and sometimes highly-speculative predictions drawing from numerous diverse professional fields. Futurology and futurism are terms that are used interchangeably in everyday conversations, yet futurology refers more specifically to predictions that result from working with raw data in a deliberate scientific manner. Futurism tends to draw from any number of professional fields and is broadly interdisciplinary in scope. A futurist is an expert across many fields; a futurologist is someone working with a more specific scope. As one might imagine, almost by default, a futurist is probably a futurologist and vice versa. The old adage of how a square is both a rectangle and a quadrilateral is reductionist, but fits well enough at the end of the day. For all intents and purposes, science-based futurism and futurology are terms which will be used to mean the same thing: the study of the what will happen in the future.

Futurists and futurologists often cite the impacts of human inventions and technologies which are usually imagined as physical objects. Technologies also exist in the form of things like ideas, languages, organized patterns of vibrations, thoughts, emotions, musics, arts, theories, or stories. At some level, imaginations and reality itself are a technology – perhaps just of non-human contrivance or origin. All of these are the working tools of daydreamers and professionals alike, confusingly or harmoniously, factoring into a timeless (and currently impossible) task: to accurately predict what the heck is going to happen next so as to be able to plan accordingly.

Futurological speculation is not limited to specialists or professionals, however, just as philosophy is not limited to classically trained or historical philosophers. The collective wonder of the laity, the reflection found in the arts and humanities, the components of experientially diverse worldviews of perception or thought are examples of factors that form commonplace varieties of futurism. Concerning both near and distant points on any predicted timeline, the effects felt upon the Earth, humanity, and civilization are tightly and inextricably linked to the accelerating growth of technologies.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature inherent in futurism as a field, any form of theoretical or practical intelligence can be drawn from and included from the many more-concrete tributary fields. This creates a vast spectrum through which practical intelligence, theoretical intelligence, and even obscurantism can be viewed. The included explanatory essays within A Technosphere Philosophical help to define some of these core concepts and philosophies central to the current state of ever-accelerating technological proliferation.

Futurists make many kinds of predictions. Some involve the near future of humanity, others the fate of the universe and the fabric of its reality. Discovering that the notion of another dark age, a second dark age, was something so generally occluded on the web while also being so variable in any applicable literature across all genres, it becomes worthy as a subject of inquest. How can the fears of dystopian futures and the dreams of panaceas that we talk all about, read about in classic works of fiction, acknowledge whenever we watch our streaming services within a contemporary golden age of bread and circuses alongside the people, stories, and subjects that we care about, still lack a cohesive theory – or even a cohesive terminology?

A study in futurology can sound daunting. Even in review, no one author or book can envelope the subject fully if it isn’t abstract or deliberately trite. Much futurology is either theoretical or hypothetical, abstract or ethereal, and at best, still informed conjecture. Countered by best guesses that can pivot on a lark, easy exceptions can disqualify solid logic at the confluence of each fork or on the way to the next. Some of the concepts involved can be tough to wrap one’s head around at first.

The thought experiments which can and will occur when thinking about the more-distant future are not far from the kinds of existential conversations which take place between friends, in cafes or around campfires, in depth, at length, insight-filled, often healing, cathartic, or a de facto staging ground for the co-creation of epiphanies. These can be silly – or literally life-altering & profound. Often, the subjects are one and the same, remaining grounded in reality for a different reason altogether. Some of the prominent subjects found in futurism now seem ever-present, others seem too distant to matter, and still others are so complex that it would become a job for a full-time think tank with an in-house data center.

The subject of a second dark age was chosen due to how occluded the concept was and is and a few quick web searches (as of 2024) will readily prove this point. A list of glaringly-impactful technologies, like AI (becoming ubiquitous), quantum technologies (too far from now), and the Singularity (too impactful while also too far-reaching), are worth addressing before progressing toward this notion of second dark ages.

AI – Ever Present

Generative AI is currently ever-present as a subject in the cultural and professional Zeitgeists. Reading prospectuses of neural networks, machine learning theory, and being as stunned by the training of large language models of the generative AIs as much the accuracy of their outputs is a glimpse and a preview of future software. AI is almost overwrought in the media and it should be. Potential long-term societal effects of AI upon individuals and societies are of particular interest, tangentially, yet the subject becomes a background component and a future factor.

Quantum Technologies – Too Far

Various niche disciplines of physics are another technological point of focus, yet like AI, become a consideration and factor instead. Most discoveries recently announced in journals (or to the media) have not yet been fully harnessed. The somewhat recent claims of room-temperature superconductivity, for example, if validated, will take months (if not years) to apply to power grids or any newly engineered electronic devices. This watershed report was mostly disproven if not falsified within the year by honest peer reviews.

Quantum technologies rely on entanglement at of particles at the subatomic level. Books have been written should these pique interest.

Like breakthrough claims in any professional field, quantum computing has a similar existence within labs and journals, currently. Many such devices exist, yet they are generally difficult to run, require near absolute-zero temperatures to operate, and currently maintain negligible amounts of total uptime or total compute power. The experimental devices also feature relatively few total qubits. Dozens or hundred of qubits, the data-holding compute units which exponentially increase the processing capacity of quantum computers (due to how the processing units can hold more than only two possible values), aren’t numerous, stable, or practical enough in each device for the compute power to shine. Quantum supremacy, the point in time that a quantum computer can outpace the worlds best ‘classical computers’ (a computer that processes via binary, in this case, so, the fastest supercomputers running) is an event for the near future, yet the common use of such processors will take much longer to reach mass adoption. Companies racing for claims of quantum supremacy sometimes make headlines, while the qualities which define that supremacy may seem like advertisements for the company making the claim. The technology and the power it unleashes is so profound that it isn’t hard to imagine that governments surely fund their own hermetically sealed programs – a rational and wise strategic positioning.

Like room temperature superconductivity and quantum processors, quantum tunneling and quantum cryptography are worth mention. Quantum tunneling can be thought of as a teleportation, manipulating particles to pass through the things that they shouldn’t – at least according to classical physics. Quantum cryptography leverages quantum trickery in a different sense, protecting data with impossibly complex cryptographies to guard sensitive information. In both cases, though in existence experimentally, practical applications are not yet widespread. The current need to develop and standardize key ancillary frameworks (e.g. software environments or programming languages) for new hardware technologies like these to harness any of these fascinating and technologically-valuable phenomena can act as an analogy for the large amounts of ancillary speculation that would be required to discuss the long-ranging societal impacts upon humanity. Many of these frameworks are niche, absent, or unfinished. Like AI, these technologies are just getting started. It cannot be stated surely if humanity or life on Earth are prepared. There is much hope that these will be used as tools to prevent them from being used as weapons and that any side effects will be pre-calculated and considered in the chess.

Quantum processors and quantum supremacy are prescient to the quest for general AI. Quantum supremacy is an important consideration and component of many futurist theories, driving the fabled (and highly probable) technological Singularity. The black holes of the universe appear to unbothered by this use of this homonym, the word “singularity,” and did not respond to the phone calls of journalists who attempted to inquire about their feelings surrounding how the futurists of Earth have borrowed a word that is also used to describe their central regions – where the laws of physics and appropriation are still thought to no longer apply. This may have pleased many futurists that no such calls were placed in response, to inquire in turn.

Synthetic Sentient Super-intelligence – Too Complex

The theorized Singularity, coined, accredited to, and popularized by futurist Ray Kurzweil, is a somewhat straight-forward idea when defined. The event will be momentous and ‘Singular’ to the history of humanity while the consequences of the Singularity, as a specific event in future timelines, dwarfs the seminal event itself. Kurzweil thinks this will occur in decades, while contrarians say hundreds or thousands of years will be required – even with quantum technologies driving the mix. The predicted impact of the Singularity often extends to humanity, nature, and the future of carbon-based life on Earth…and perhaps humanity’s shot at becoming an interstellar or intergalactic spacefaring species. The notion of the Singularity is initially a point in time and eventually a planetary event that is definable by the emergence of a sentient super-intelligent entity that is fully self-directed – an evolved form of AI stemming from a self-updating general AI. Debate surrounding the Singularity, however, often features opinionated divides along one of two paths: the darker fearful dystopian and the brighter hopeful utopian. If you’ve ever sought social support from colleagues or friends about a problem, then you already know which path humanity tends to popularize in chats and conversations. If you don’t, you might be commendable and rare. We should all hope the first super-intelligent AI is as kind, stoic, or immutably optimistic.

A dialectical and study of one poorly-defined theory and subject – like the possibility of a second human era which already includes the word ‘dark’ – also means that providing equal weighting to each possibility could upset the ratio of ‘good vs bad’ whenever the total outcomes ‘generally judged as good’ outnumber the total outcomes which would upset very many people and be ‘generally regarded as a mistake.’ The need to be as objective as possible is an ever-present consideration in the age of deepfakes, scams, the ongoing peer-review academic/journal publication crisis, hidden agendas, and advancing AI, et alia. A need to avoid clichés of ‘killer robots’ or commonplace ideas like ‘nVidia is Skynet’ are a battle against thoughts which have drifted in and out of collective imaginations for decades. It’s often key, in life, to be (and remain actively) aware of one’s own implicit biases – and cognitive biases in general. To distance oneself therefrom and recenter is to hedge against judgement prior to investigation, quite deliberately, while taking in information which may (or may not) influence any trajectory of humanity’s possible futures.

The watershed-moments of the breakthrough technologies mentioned are indeed expected, eventually and in one form or another, though the next remarkable human age cannot reasonably be judged as necessarily dark. The future, however, is indeed weird. If proof of the statement is ever necessary, simply compare it to present-day norms of life. Googling terms like CRISPR, longevity biohacker, twelve base-pair DNA, cancer vaccine, organoid computer, gene therapy, active dream imaging, neural lace, or synthetic life, are seminal technologies which already exist in the biomedical-industrial complex with public-facing news releases and with similar overarching seismic impacts. Considering the pace of technological innovation, scientific discovery, scholarly publication cycles, or mainstream headlines, the above biotechnological breakthroughs are ‘old news.’ CRISPR is perhaps the oldest of these examples. Discovered/observed in 1987, CRISPR was eventually refined for widespread use by the later 2010s.

What of the societies who live in the midst of these game-changing technologies and proliferate in parallel over large swaths of time? This is where the human penchant for worrying – sometimes rational, sometimes unfounded – enters the room. How will the individuals who comprise each society, in future generations, respond? En masse or as a fractured group collectives? Will they be hiding, or will they be laughing at their ancestors ‘irrational’ fears, having foreseen and solved those problems en route?

Finding Dark Age 2.0

Long conversations with friends in the tech industry, government, and coders who live and breathe “the beauty of the baud,” can fuel ideas surrounding humanity’s trajectory and fate. To knowingly assume is to deliberately discard the cognitive crystals required to power a metaphorical time machine, and these conversations were each aware that notions of a “Digital Dark Age” or “Second Dark Age” are concerns that prey upon and permeate the human penchant for worry – and that they lack cohesive definitions.

The UVA library’s Digital Humanities guide reveals many tangential keywords which help to expand scope. Valid articles, interviews, news releases, books, and historic writings sometimes come close to defining or predicting the reality of a ‘Second Dark Age,’ yet these are sporadic across libraries and various kinds of web searches. Years and decades can elapse in the original publication dates of other search engine results which return zero mention of any phrases synonymous with ‘second or digital dark age.’ Lacking a common terminology for those kinds of dystopias also stymies surface-level web searches and then procures few results that are free of search bias or biases which arise due to the connotation of the English word ‘dark.’

Some hits and sources can be over a century old, some prognostications older still, and other searches can be densely populated by works of science fiction that were written in the era in which the genre entered the literary canon. Those stories, parables, and warnings, woven into written tradition and as moving metaphors, sometimes provide utopian counterbalance, yet muddy searches for non-fictive results. Knowledge, expertise, and foresight are not at all lacking in the professional communities: Occam’s Razor suggests that a common and unified terminology had yet to be established across professional fields which allows all such discourse to coalesce into simple web search results.

Anecdotally, the terms “digital dark age,” “second dark age,” or “the next/coming dark age” are interchangeable, and unless you ask a librarian or archivist, the concept itself lacks clear margins or borders. The potential paths to obscure futures also lacks clear consensuses of lines in the sands of silicon in terms of any sequences of probable events and the resulting societal impacts. All human eras are notably defined by the conditions under which generations of human beings spend their entire lives, however.

As Influenced by Popular Media

Psychological studies can seem to implicate technology as the cause of mental, emotional, or social complaints at the level of the individual (and the collective in terms of widespread adoptions of various technologies), which could be judged as a negative or dark impact. Staring at screens too much – instead of living life as human beings were meant – surely impacts the human condition. Studies which point out the positive effects of the use of any given technology seem to be overshadowed by those which are more likely to grab the consumer attention, ironically.

Yet “Human Brains Collectively Shrink,” suggests a Wall Street Journal article which describes a physical shift in the average human brain volume over the last several millennia. This could be assumptively linked to a decline in intelligence at the collective level of societies over centuries. Longitudinal proof in future decades may be needed to actually improve such a conclusion, yet this bolsters a biased thread of thought regarding some biological consequences of technologies that are theorized to have allowed human beings to offload knowledge. Though still in the realm of speculation and conjecture, this clearly aligns with contemporary notions like “popcorn brain” (a distinct shortening of the average internet/smartphone user’s attention spans or perhaps an acquired variation of ADD/ADHD), or so-called “iPad Kids” (small children given constant access to tablets so as to keep them occupied and pacified, arguably altering their development from a fundamental neurological level up). Popcorn brain affects a very specific aspect of the human brain; chronic iPad use in small children has unknown long-term results.

On the podcast “Honestly with Bari Weiss,” prominent social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains a viable theory about how Smartphones Rewired Childhood. The solutions, to revert those societies and childhoods of the more affluent and connected world to the norms that human beings are more familiar with, are nearly impossible to expect and extremely difficult to impose, respectively. Any such juggernauts of change, ironically, will not easily be stopped by the masses who demand the adoption of new technologies which can streamline life, add efficiency or convenience, create the sense of connection, or provide escapist distractions or pleasure, etc.

Just as all widespread technologies have played roles in affecting human evolution, modern phenomenon may foment adaptations at the level of the neurology of the individual, shifting cognition, affect, and conation. Due to the experiential nature of life having a direct impact upon neurology, this is self-evident.

Expanding and Contracting Views

Shrinking brains over millennia or the rewiring of the brains of young people, at an averaged neurological level across generations, seems like it could be a threat to the trajectory of raw human capability at first glance. The WSJ article and episode of the Honestly w/ Bari Weiss podcast featuring Jonathan Haidt, even if their hypotheses are eventually proven true over future decades, are examples of valid conjectures which could easily be assembled in the mind of an individual listener or reader as proof that societal conditions are worsening – a confirmation bias. The faulty logic could continue that if society is progressively worsening or de-sophisticating, the specter of a darker time does then emerge.

Sensationalist reports, regardless of veracity, reach wise audiences due to the propensity of the human condition to fear the unknown. The opposite side of the coin is the human desire to experience in the presence of certainty, predictability, and familiarity, even if fewer new things happen from within those secure kinds of spaces. If the evolutionary schools of psychology, biology, or anthropology can be given credence, Gestaltists and neuropsychologists would agree that pattern recognition and avoiding danger are indelibly connected to the desire to stay alive. Very often, free will can still act as an organ stop of some kind whensoever an existential surrender to fate might neutralize any given individual’s ostensible capacity to make good decisions.

In these terms, it should remain difficult to hold most technologies in any direct form of contempt once awareness is present in the individual. Individual psychological consequences resulting from technology, instead of the sum effects upon the societies that those effected individuals form, are an additional thread to later consider.

It must be reaffirmed that valid and alarming concerns do not dictate an entire age or era that is filled with less ‘light,’ fewer ‘good happenings,’ or a shift in the quality of societal fabrics. To collect negative proof outright is to pin the tail on the donkey – without firmly establishing pointed causations – and will take decades to prove or disprove as the causes and effects unfold.

Very often, free will can still act as an organ stop of some kind whensoever an existential surrender to fate might neutralize any given individual’s ostensible capacity to make good decisions. In these terms, it should remain difficult to hold most technologies in any direct form of contempt.

Composing a Foreground’s Palette with Care

The Coming Dark Age – speculation involving climate change’s influence upon the fall of societies. The fall of Rome is highlighted and linked to the thesis.

Entering a Dark Age of Innovation – theory from Jonathan Huebner (a Pentagon Physicist) with the counterpoints of Ray Kurzweil regarding rates of innovation in particular. This thread of thought involve the speed and trajectory of innovations and their impacts – if and when rates of innovation are used as a defining metric to describe any recession of societal sophistication.

Techno feudalism Replacing Market Capitalism – Theorizes a potential paradigm shift in the primary subtype of capitalisms in global use. Mentioning historical shifts and unpredictable contemporary market behaviors, and though brief, is a reminder of how economic shifts are a component of any major shifts in dominant worldviews, of cultures, or within societies, et alia. A unique or novel economic environment will be a feature of any substantial shifts in global societies. This article inspires deeper research regarding the future of economic systems and indicates one piece of the puzzle.

Archive of WSJ Article – A “how-to” guide written to aid readers/consumers identify AI-generated products/books. The publication is a recent of example of the need to combat misinformation or to adapt to a rapidly-changing technological landscape. The language used is ostensibly simplified for readers who might struggle with advanced levels or reading/writing and the publication noble for publishing such content as a public service.

The Venus Project has a plan for a ‘fully automated luxury” society, describes how technology and resources could be ethically leveraged to cure disasters like climate change, pollution, hunger, disease, poverty, and other glaring global issues of the Earth’s and humanity’s suffering. Utopian views often cite human greed, corruption, and the misdirection of resources as factors which prevent utopian ideals. The project provides a prominent counterpoint.

Contemporary Estonia describes Estonia’s society and and government as related to central data systems, “a digital society.” Their systems are highly effective, secure, accurate, and are an example of a solution at the collected level of an entire nation as created by novel technologies.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World presents a subtler ‘dark utopia’ of a distracted and disinterested proletariat.

A Clockwork Orange and Fahrenheit 451 contextualize hypothetical impacts of technology on individuals/societies. Themes of involuntary indoctrination, censorship, and the decay of critical thought/intelligence at the level of societies are relevant themes.

Reflections, Mere Small Black Screens

“The Dark Age” referred to slowed technological progress resultant from declines in culture and society from that of the ‘light’ of classical antiquity. A second dark age might not feature such severe lapses in rates of intelligence, innovation, or literacy. Strengthening a centric point in timelines in which innovation itself began to grow exponentially (instead of occasionally) via the deliberate and widespread integrations of both practical intelligence and theoretical intelligence have made room for a rare event, new branch of philosophy, described by Frederick Ferré in Philosophy of Technology. The descriptions of this new philosophy are dense by necessity, cerebral, and compelling.

If a place or time might be the source of the related shifts, Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris traces and concentrates many related historical and present-day influences in the context of Silicon Valley’s echoes – innovation’s proliferation – in truly deep and fundamentally valuable ways.

The ever-accelerating expansion of what can be termed the ‘technosphere’ is a penultimate subject of inquiry due to the exceedingly complex dynamic interrelationship shared with its creator, humankind. Simply glancing around a room, at a building, at an article of clothing (or on this screen), you’ll quickly remember (or notice for the first time and feel a sudden pause) that many of the materials making up your surroundings are manufactured or outright synthetic. This is a physical manifestation of that expansion.

In the here and now, governments, corporations, and universities exist in very different social and economic conditions then they had in other ages of stagnated progress. While the tools necessary to innovate (Computers, 3D printers, modeling software, raw compute power, great ideas…or the subsequent sales which hope to hasten the return of any capital investments) are commonplace in the affluent corners of the world, any projected rates of innovation could become less important as a focus.

An abundance of loosely-aggregated information, tucked away in corners of the web that escape the attention, meant that the potential of a second dark age of some kind – in the near or foreseeable future – was in need of a centralization of sorts. No web searches could clearly answer questions regarding a second dark age, and nor can I, so the very definitions of these particular hypothetical fates are similarly abstract and elusive.

Sociology, economics, psychology, international relations, art, science, and philosophy are a few of many disciplines touched upon while aggregating some futurist theories. Any interrelationships between any of these spheres are vast and complex. Despite the seemingly ubiquitous presence of generalized fear that can be spun or interpreted through so many headlines, connecting the dots first requires the establishment and understanding of each of those dots – an impossible task.

“In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.”

Carl Sagan

Preliminary Reference List (Fall ’23)

Bastani, A. (2019). Fully automated luxury communism: a manifesto. Verso.

Bridle, J. (2018). New dark age: technology, knowledge and the end of the future. Verso.

Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2014). The second machine age: work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies (First Edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

Cavanagh, S. R. (2019). Hivemind: the new science of tribalism in our divided world (First edition). Grand Central Publishing.

Future | Etymology of future by etymonline. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2024, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/future

Huxley, A. (2006). Brave new world. Harper Perennial.

Kolbert, E. (2015). The sixth extinction: an unnatural history (First Picador edition). Picador, Henry Holt and Company.

Kurzweil, R. (2000). The age of spiritual machines: when computers exceed human intelligence. Penguin Books.

Kurzweil, R. (2006). The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology. Penguin Books.

Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget: a manifesto (1st ed). Alfred A. Knopf.

Lanier, J. (2013). Who owns the future? (First Simon&Schuster hardcover edition). Simon & Schuster.

Lanier, J. (2017). Dawn of the new everything: encounters with reality and virtual reality (First edition). Henry Holt and Company.

Lanier, J. (2018). Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now (First edition). Henry Holt and Company.

Rifkin, J. (2009). The empathic civilization: the race to global consciousness in a world in crisis. J.P. Tarcher/Penguin.

Rifkin, J. (2011). The third industrial revolution: how lateral power is transforming energy, the economy, and the world. Palgrave Macmillan.

Sagan, C. (1997). The demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark (1. Ballantine Books ed). Ballantine Books.

Schwab, K., & Davis, N. (2018a). Shaping the future of the fourth industrial revolution: a guide to building a better world (First American edition). Currency.

The Venus Project. (n.d.). The Venus Project. Retrieved September 24, 2023, from https://www.thevenusproject.com/

Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other (Third edition, revised trade paperback edition). Basic Books.

Woolley, S. (2020). The reality game: how the next wave of technology will break the truth (First edition). PublicAffairs.