New book · Out November 10
For anyone who ever wished for a word that didn’t exist.
Future Words coins 100 new terms for the ideas, behaviors and frustrations we can all feel but cannot yet name. Get the hardcover for $17.91.
Offer available for delivery addresses in the United States.
A Taste
Six of the 100
Every word in the book comes with a definition, a usage example and the notes behind the coinage. Here are six you may find yourself using by the end of the week.
The ache for a memory that was AI-generated and never actually lived through.
The vindicated delight of watching supposedly godlike technology fail in public.
The act of (over)confidently narrating a future you haven’t tested or researched, often with slides.
The cognitive cost of having to constantly verify the authenticity of everything you see and hear.
The inability to remember whether you discovered something yourself or were served it by an algorithm.
The disorientation of earning from multiple sources and being paid on no set schedule.
Who It’s For
For people who live in words
If your morning isn’t complete until you’ve solved the daily word puzzle, this is a book to keep within reach. It is a glossary you can open anywhere, with 100 entries made to be read, shared and argued over.
Your job is finding the right words for what is changing. Future Words is 100 fresh, quotable ways to describe where technology, work, money and culture are headed, each ready to drop into a deck or a pitch.
Editors, hosts, producers and writers: every term is a story angle. The words span relationships, identity, work, money, health, technology, leisure, parenting and travel, plus a chapter of future insults.
About The Book
A non-obvious glossary of terms that don’t exist (but soon will)
Language is how we make sense of the world. So what happens when the world changes faster than our words can keep up? This book has been nearly two decades in the making, and across ten chapters it gives names to the things we already feel.
#1 Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of eleven books, founder of the Non-Obvious Company and an adjunct professor of storytelling at Georgetown University.
Author of two previous award-winning books on future trends, and creator of the multiplayer interactive keynote VisuAIse Futures.
Get the book. Start using the words.
One hardcover copy of Future Words, shipped to you.
Offer available for delivery addresses in the United States.
The Backstory
Why $17.91? Here’s the backstory behind why we picked this price
In 1791, three books appeared across three continents that would change the future of publishing. Together, they changed how the world understood the power of books.
The first complete printed edition of Dream of the Red Chamber came off the press. Its author, Cao Xueqin, had died decades earlier, leaving editors and printers to shape the handwritten manuscript into what is still called the greatest novel in the Chinese language.
Readers got their first look at The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, in French, before it ever appeared in English. Famous for serving time as a printer’s apprentice, one of the eventual architects of American independence shared the story of becoming himself.
Thomas Paine published Rights of Man and started an argument about who gets to speak, and who gets to rule. His work inspired a debate about public education, maternity rights, the creation of pensions and the value of hereditary monarchies.
All of these books show us that the future gets written by whoever is brave enough to write it.
In the closing weeks of 1791, the American Bill of Rights took effect, guaranteeing freedom of speech and of the press. Those are the freedoms that we celebrate as authors alongside the writers, editors and journalists of today and tomorrow.
So, in honor of this one year – we decided to price the book at $17.91.
We believe writers bring future words to life. Just like they did back in 1791.