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Algonesia

(n.)

The inability to remember whether you discovered something yourself or were served it by an algorithm.

She was about to claim she’d found the band first when the algonesia set in: had she, or had the app?

Does it ring true?

From the future, or already here?

Coinage notes

Algorithm spliced into amnesia (Greek, “without memory”). The forgetting here is specifically about the gap in the provenance of an idea; in the future we may never know which of our favorite things we actually chose ourselves.

Future Words book cover

There are 99 more where this came from.

Future Words: A Non-Obvious Glossary of Terms That Don’t Exist (But Soon Will) collects all 100, each with its example sentence and coinage notes, from the bestselling authors of The Future Normal. Hardcover, October 20, 2026.