The Rules of Technology

III. Technology has its own rules. Rules that apply to any/all other industry/sectors do not apply to technology.

IV. The probability of any particular technology actually existing in the real world is inversely proportional to the number of hedge terms that have been invented for it.

def and background: hedge term: An invented term of technology most often created when it becomes clear to the original proponents of a given technology that it may not may not actually be possible in the present day or ever. The most widely cited example is the invention of the term “machine learning” as a hedge term for artificial intelligence (AI). The major advantage of the hedge term is its use as a convenient escape route/back door when questions arise as to the realism and actual possibility of the original technology existing. For example if a proponent of AI is asked why no AI actually exist he can simply reply “I never said AI, I said machine learning, they are very different things.” If pressed further he can resort to modifiers like ‘deep’ to confuse and obfuscate the original question. For example, “You see machine learning is a very different thing indeed from deep machine learning/deep learning.” Hedge term descirptors often serve double duty as modifiers of the original technology as well, further confusing the issue. As an example many modern technology proponents refer to AI as it was originally envisioned in the 1950s as ‘deep AI’ or ‘special AI’. When pressed they say “They were referring to deep AI back then, we no longer worry about or work on that problem.” See subsection (a.) for more info on descriptor terms in technology.

Subsection (a.) The probability decreases exponentially when the hedge term(s) are further modified by the addition of vague and meaningless, but serious sounding descriptors (e.g. Deep).