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DEFINED TERMCore concepts

A WORD FOR THE WORLD AFTER AI

Vision

A coherent image of a desirable direction that helps people organise action without pretending the future is already known.

Working definition. Vision is a future orientation made shareable. It gives present choices direction while remaining open to revision through encounter and experience.

Inherited meaning

Vision joins literal seeing with prophecy, political aspiration, artistic imagination, and organisational purpose. Its danger is the solitary visionary who mistakes personal certainty for collective destiny.

Meaning in the imagination economy

Prediction asks what is likely; vision asks what is worth helping become likely. AI can generate persuasive future images, but it cannot grant them legitimacy. A vision becomes meaningful when people can recognise themselves as agents inside it and alter its course.

What changes in practice

Express the future as changed relationships and lived conditions, not only technological objects. Name whose desire it carries, what it refuses, and what present decision would make it more credible.