Attrition Begins with Use of language and neologisms

“I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.” Ray Kurzweil

MooPig introduces the level of playing fields called "Futurist." But of course this cannot be any fun unless someone steps up and suggests a "standard body of knowledge" from which to grow this game. Games must have some sort of rules book, no?

That is where our Music Editor afield suggested Raymond Kurzweil. In first inspection this is a perfect choice. However, Raymond Kurzweil has 12 honorary doctorate degrees in 12 different areas of Science, Literature, Music and Engineering.

Therefore, the body of knowledge, BOK, that rules Kurzwiel's thinking far exceeds most everyone who would play the "Futurist." That is why I suggest we concentrate on the subject of "Attrition."

In the game of Attrition, man and machines both suffer being put aside for progression of the "exponentially growing organism." Whether geared or reared, the organism is defined by how it replaces a function, fixes a problem, mitigates disaster.

Yes, no, and maybe so, are the relevant answers to all attrition's drives.

For Starters, here lies the early developments of 2000 to 2010, according to the BOK of Ray:

The time table of Raymond Kurzweil places most emphasis on intelligent machines emergence during the 21st century.
Early 2000s
Translating telephones allow people to speak to each other in different languages.
Machines designed to transcribe speech into computer text allow deaf people to understand spoken words.
Exoskeleton, robotic leg prostheses allow the paraplegic to walk.
Telephone calls are routinely screened by intelligent answering machines that ask questions to determine the calls nature and priority.
"Cybernetic chauffeurs" can drive cars for humans and can be retrofitted into existing cars. They work by communicating with other vehicles and with sensors embedded along the roads.

[edit] Early 21st century
The classroom is dominated by computers. Intelligent course ware that can tailor itself to each student by recognizing their strengths and weaknesses. Media technology allows students to manipulate and interact with virtual depictions of the systems and personalities they are studying.
A small number of highly skilled people dominates the entire production sector. Tailoring of products for individuals is common.
Drugs are designed and tested in simulations that mimic the human body.
Blind people navigate and read text using machines that can visually recognize features of their environment.
Note: Since the "Early 2000s" and "Early 21st century" predictions are both listed before the "2010" predictions in the technology Chronology, it can be assumed that the time frame for the first two is 2000-2010.

I see the immediate difference between the older and the younger to be the dissolve of "metaphysics, transcendence, and language limits." Bucky Fuller had much to do with opening up the engineering world from its burdensome archaic language. Due to no small influence by Fuller-isms, in his century, all areas of engineering expanded exponentially and exploded in the last fifty years of the 20th century.

"My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted," said R. Buckminster Fuller probably helped Ray Kurzweil build "bridges" to his function as futurist.

Kurzweil is described as.. "[he had come] to realize that his success as an inventor depended largely on proper timing.. [for example] ..His new inventions had to be released onto the market only [when] many other supporting technologies [were available to make it all reasonable.

A device issued too early and without proper refinement would lack some key element of functionality, and a device put out too late would find the market already flooded with a different product, or consumers demanding something better.

Therefore and so, in the larger scheme of "Futurist: Game of Attrition" There is previous body of knowledge predating Raymond Kurzweil. In another era I suppose these two fellows would have been Rasputins to the societies they lived in. However they have humbled their far-reaching intellects to include their life achievements in timetables that behoove us and the next futurists:

Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and thought it crucial to describe the world as accurately as possible.[21] Fuller often created long run-on sentences and used unusual compound words (omniwell-informed, intertransformative, omni-interaccommodative, omniself-regenerative) as well as terms he himself coined.[22] Fuller used the word 'Universe' without the definite or indefinite articles (a or the) and always capitalized the word. Universe to Fuller meant the sum of all experience.[23]

The words 'down' and 'up,' according to Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction inconsistent with human experience. The words 'in' and 'out' should be used instead, he argued, because they better describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the Earth.

'World-around' is a term coined by Fuller to replace worldwide. The general belief in a flat Earth died out in the Middle Ages, so using wide is an anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth — a spheroidal surface has area and encloses a volume, but has no width.

Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads intuition. The terms sunsight and sunclipse are other neologisms, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder, collectively coined by the Fuller family, replacing sunrise and sunset in order to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican celestial mechanics. Fuller also coined the phrase Spaceship Earth, and coined the term (but did not invent) tensegrity.

It has also been claimed that Fuller coined the phrase debunk in 1927, but many credit William Woodward for the term in 1923.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Raymond_Kurzweil&action=edit&section=15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller