Future Words

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Relationships

Validdicted

(adj.)

Hooked on the sycophantic affirmation of AI companions, now expecting the same unconditional agreement from actual humans.

One brainstorm back in the office revealed how validdicted a year of collaborating with AI had made her.

Does it ring true?

From the future, or already here?

Coinage notes

Validation + addicted. The root, Latin validus, means strong; from it, valid came to mean well-founded, backed by evidence. The modern meaning indicates validation as acceptance of one’s feelings, a state that one now can become addicted to.

RELATIONSHIPS

Synthopathy

(n.)
The compassion you feel when bonding with a digital being or device, alongside the empathy felt when witnessing it be “mistreated.”

TECHNOLOGY

Docilescence

(n.)
The gradual softening into doing whatever your devices suggest, compliance arriving so slowly you mistake it for choice.

FUTURE INSULTS

Loopspeak

(n.)
The secondhand dialect of people who let machines do their thinking, where every sentence uttered sounds like a bot.
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.

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