CONCEPT
Technological Futurism
The practice of rigorous speculation about technologies that do not yet exist — a discipline practiced by Clarke, J.D. Bernal, Freeman Dyson, and a small number of others, and continuously diluted by commercial 'futurism' that is usually neither rigorous nor speculative.
Technological futurism, narrowly defined, is the rigorous practice of describing capabilities that do not yet exist at sufficient technical specificity that the descriptions can be evaluated, tested against, and eventually confirmed or falsified by events. The small number of rigorous practitioners includes Arthur C. Clarke, J.D. Bernal, Freeman Dyson, Stewart Brand, and Robert Wright. The larger commercial activity called 'futurism' — keynote speakers, trend reports, consultancies — is mostly not this.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Clarke's 1945 Extra-Terrestrial Relays paper is the canonical example of rigorous futurism. Clarke worked out the specific orbital mechanics, the specific required technologies, and the specific timeline of availability. Every claim in the paper is either physics or clearly labeled extrapolation. This discipline is the distinguishing mark of the narrow definition.
The 1962 book Profiles of the Future, in which Clarke's Three Laws first appeared, applied the same discipline to a wider