A Dictionary of the Near Future

Douglas Coupland has produced a clever and alarming dictionary of the near future (which seems to actually be applying to the present moment). Here are just a few of his entries:

BELL’S LAW OF TELEPHONY No matter what technology is used, your monthly phone bill magically remains about the same size.
DENARRATION The process whereby one’s life stops feeling like a story.
DESELFING Willingly diluting one’s sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible. (See also Omniscience Fatigue; Undeselfing)
DIMANCHOPHOBIA Fear of Sundays, a condition that reflects fear of unstructured time. Also known as acalendrical anxiety.
FICTIVE REST The inability of many people to fall asleep until after reading even the tiniest amount of fiction.
FRANKENTIME What time feels like when you realize that most of your life is spent working with and around a computer and the Internet.
INSTANT REINCARNATION The fact that most adults, no matter how great their life is, wish for radical change in their life. The urge to reincarnate while still alive is near universal.
INTRAVINCULAR FAMILIAL SILENCE We need to be around our families not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about, but because they know precisely which subjects to avoid.
INTERNAL VOICE BLINDNESS The near universal inability of people to articulate the tone and personality of the voice that forms their interior monologue.
MALFACTORY AVERSION The ability to figure out what it is in life you don’t do well, and then to stop doing it.
OMNISCIENCE FATIGUE The burnout that comes with being able to know the answer to almost anything online.
PROCELERATION The acceleration of acceleration.
PSEUDOALIENATION The inability of humans to create genuinely alienating situations. Anything made by humans is a de facto expression of humanity. Technology cannot be alienating because humans created it. Genuinely alien technologies can be created only by aliens. Technically, a situation one might describe as alienating is, in fact, “humanating.”
ROSENWALD’S THEOREM The belief that all the wrong people have self-esteem.
UNDESELFING The attempt, usually frantic and futile, to reverse the deselfing process.

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