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Future Fatigue: How Hype has Replaced Hope in the 21st Century

Gaining traction in the bleakest depths of 2020, Generative AI offered something more than just a tech product. It proposed a way of reimagining the future.

Eryk Salvaggio

26 Mar 2025 — 1 min read

New from me in Tech Policy Press!

Gaining traction in the bleakest depths of 2020, Generative AI offered something more than just a tech product. It proposed a way of reimagining the future. Having lost all hope for a democratic process in which biopolitics, climate politics, racial politics and electoral politics were exhausting us all, we turned to a hype network.

This network focused on embedding its new tools of statistical prediction into exponentially vast areas of our lives and told us we didn't need politics at all. And unlike hope, hype can make you rich.

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