Dublin,M. Futurehype. 1992

Dublin, Max. Futurehype: The Tyranny of Prophecy. New York: Penguin Books (Plume), 1992. 290 pages.

In this, his first book, Max Dublin, a Harvard Ph.D. and research fellow at the University of Toronto, takes aim at the institutionalization of prophecy. He sees prophecy creeping into our daily lives, from corporate executives and bureaucratic officials with their "strategic plans," to Pentagon generals and information-age gurus. Lurking behind our culture's obsession with the future are hidden agendas: prophecy depends on ideological assumptions, and is used to promote social power.

The first three chapters deal with prophecy as propaganda, the psychology of futurology, and the ideology of futurology. The next four examine "futurehype" in the military, in education, in health, and in the environmental movement. The last chapter, "Truth and Politics in Debates About the Future," makes some important observations about the confusion of science and politics in our culture: "Not only do scientific debates have wide political ramifications, but what would otherwise be hopelessly shoddy political debates often manage to achieve a certain degree of legitimacy and respectability by assuming scientific airs. As a consequence of all of this, both scientific and political debates about the future tend at best to be obscure and confusing and at worst to be mistaken and misleading."
ISBN 0-452-26800-1