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(n.)
The newly necessary skill of being exhaustively literal in saying exactly what you mean when collaborating with AI.
Nobody at the agency rated literalcy as a skill until the machines began delivering exactly what was asked, and nothing more.
Does it ring true?
From the future, or already here?
Literal folded into literacy. Literacy was the ability to read; literalcy is the ability to be read, prized in an age when your most attentive collaborator is a machine that takes every instruction literally.
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.