VESTRAND'S EXTELOPEDIA represents the guaranteed results of the humanless, hence FAULTLESS work of eighteen thousand of our COMPUTERS (futurological computers).
The Entries in VESTRAND'S EXTELOPEDIA cover a Cosmos of Eight Hundred Gigatrillion Sema-NumericaJ Computations carried out in the Comurbia of our publishing house by BATTOMMALUCS—Batteries of the Most Massive Luminal Comfuters. Their work has been assembled by our SUPERPUTER, the electronic incarnation of the Superman myth, which cost us $218,026,300 at last year's prices. EXTELOPEDIA is an abbreviation of the words EXTRAPOLATIONAL TELEONOMIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, or PRAIMENCYC (Prognostic-Aim Encyclopedia) with Maximal Forereach in Time.
What is our extelopedia?
It is the Fairest-born Child of Protofuturology, that honorable, albeit primitive, discipline conceived at the end of the twentieth century. The EXTELOPEDIA contains information about History as it is going to happen, in other words, UNIVERSAL FUTURE HISTORY; affairs Cosmonomic, Cosmolithic, and Cosmatic; EVERYTHING that is going to be ATTEMPTED, together with the data, the WHEREFORES and WHENCES; the Great New Achievements of Science and Technology, Specifying which of them are going to be the most threatening to you personally; the Evolution of Faiths and Creeds, inter alia, under the entry FUTURELIGIONS; as well as 65,760 other Questions and Problems. Sports Lovers annoyed by the Uncertainty of the Results in any competition will, thanks to the EXTELOPEDIA, save themselves much unnecessary irritation and emotion in the fields of athletics and erothletics alike. All you have to do is sign the very advantageous coupon attached to this Proffertinc.*
Is the information contained in VESTRAND'S EXTELOPEDIA Accurate and Reliable? Research at MIT, MAT, and MUT, which together form the USIB (United States Intellectronical Board), shows that both previous editions of our Extelopedia deviated from the Facts within a range of 9.008-8.05% per letter. But our present MOST FUTURE edition will get to the Very Heart of the future with a probability of 99.0879%.
Why is it so accurate?
Why can you rely so completely on the present edition? Because this edition owes its origins to the world's very first application of two entirely New Methods of Sounding the Future—the Suplex and Cretilang Methods.
The SUPLEX, or Supercomplex, METHOD is derived from a process which in 1983 enabled the Mac Flac Hac Computer Program to beat
ALL THE WORLD'S GRAND MASTERS OF CHESS
including Bobby Fischer, checkmating them during their Simultaneous Match eighteen times per gram, calorie, centimeter, and second. This program subsequently underwent a thousand-fold intensification and Extrapolational adaptation, thanks to which not only can it FORESEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN, if ANYTHING does happen, but also foresee precisely what will happen if It doesn't happen even a little, i.e., if It doesn't occur at all.
UNTIL NOW Predictors have worked solely on POSI-POTS (on the basis of POSITIVE POTENCES, i.e., by allowing for the Possibility of Anything Materializing). Our New SUPLEX Program ALSO works on NEGAPOTS (Negative Potences). It allows for ANYTHING which, ACCORDING TO the current opinions of ALL THE EXPERTS, UNDOUBTEDLY CANNOT OCCUR. And, as we know from another source, the real flavor of the Future is precisely that which the Experts think WILL NOT OCCUR.
THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT THE FUTURE HINGES ON!
Nevertheless, in order to submit the results obtained by the Suplex Method to a certain controlled madness (Conmad), and regardless of the Great Expense, we have applied another COMPLETELY new method—FUTULINGUISTIC Extrapolation.
Basing themselves on an analysis of developmental tendencies—trends with an indeterministic gradient (Trendend-erents)—twenty-six of our LINGCOMPS (Linguistic Computers, interdependently linked, i.e., interlinked) created TWO THOUSAND dialects, idioms, onomastics, slangs, nomenclatures, and grammars of the future.
What was the significance of this achievement? It signified the creation of a LINGUISTIC BASIS OF THE WORLD AFTER THE YEAR 2020. In short, our COMURBIA— that is, our Computer City, numbering 1,720 Intelligence units per cubic millimeter of PSYSYM (Psychical-Synthetic Mass)—constructed the words, sentences, syntax, and grammar (as well as the meanings) of the Languages which mankind will be using in the FUTURE.
Naturally, knowing MERELY THE LANGUAGE in which people will be communicating with one another and with machines ten, twenty, or thirty years hence does not mean knowing WHAT THEY WILL THEN most readily and most often be saying. And it is precisely THA T which we shall know, because as a rule people speak FIRST, and think and act LATER. The fundamental defects in all previous attempts at constructing a LINGUISTIC FUTUROLOGY, or PROGNOLINGUA, resulted from a FALSE RATIONALITY of procedure. Scholars have tacitly assumed that people will say ONLY REASONABLE THINGS in the Future and thus will have progressed.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that people LARGELY say SILLY THINGS. Therefore, in order to simulate a typically human mode of expression in an Extrapolation of more than a quarter of a century, we have constructed IDIOMATS and COMDEBILS (COM-BUNGLES)—that is, Idiomatic Antomats and bungling Computers Debiles—and it is they that have just created the PARAGENAGRAM, the paralogical generative grammar of the Language of the Future.
Thanks to this, Controlled Profuters, Langlings, and Premnestoschizoplegiators have composed 118 Sublanguages (dialects, idioms, slangs) such as GOSSIPTEX, NONSTEX, GAB, GIBBER, BUGHUM, BLABLEX, AGRAM, and CRETINAX. These ultimately served as a basis for CRETILANGUISTICS, which made the CONFAB program feasible. In particular, it made it possible to carry out Intimate Prognoses relating to Futerotics (including details of human intercourse with artogs and cimogs, as well as sensuals and devials in the field of gravitationless orbital, venereal, and Martian sexonautics). This was successful thanks to such programming languages as EROTI-GLOM, PANTUSEX, and BYWAY.
But that is still not all! Our CONTROFUTERS (Controlled Futurologiters) adopted the results of the CRETI-LANG and SUPLEX methods, and only after collating three hundred Gigabits of Information did COREX—the Complex Corrector of the EMBRYO of the Extelopedia— emerge.
Why the EMBR 70? Because that was how we got a VERSION of the Extelopedia entirely INCOMPREHENSIBLE to every living person, Nobel prizewinners included.
Why INCOMPREHENSIBLE! Because it consisted of TEXTS articulated in a language which NOBODY AS YET SPEAKS, and which NOBODY IS therefore IN A POSITION TO COMPREHEND. And it took eighty of our RETROLINTERS to retranslate—into a contemporary language known to us—the sensational data expressed in a language that has not yet come into being.
How should you use Vestrand's Extelopedia?
It fits on a Handy Rack which we can supply at a small additional cost. Then, positioning yourself no more than two paces from the shelves, you should state the required entry in a matter-of-fact tone, not too loudly. Then, after flicking through its own index, the appropriate Magnetome will jump spontaneously into your outstretched right hand. Left-handed persons are kindly requested to train themselves in advance AL WA YS to extend the right hand, lest the Magnetome suffer a deviation in its trajectory and hit the speaker or even a Bystander, however PAINLESSLY.
The entries are printed in TWO COLORS. The BLACK entries signify that the PROPERVIRT (probability percentage of virtualization) exceeds 99.9%—or in popular parlance, it's a sure thing.
The RED entries signify that their Propervirt is less than 86.5%, and because of this undesirable state of affairs the ENTIRE TEXT of each such entry remains in UNCEASING REMOTE-CONTROLLED (holognetic) CONTACT with the Editorial Board of VESTRAND'S EX-TELOPEDIA. As soon as our Profuters, Panters, and Credacters obtain CORRECT NEW RESULTS in their unceasing work of Observing the Future, the text of the ENTRY printed in RED undergoes the appropriate correlation (readaptation) AUTOMATICALLY. For improvements arising by this IMPERCEPTIBLE, REMOTE-CONTROLLED, OPTIMUM method, VESTRAND BOOKS makes no extra charge!
In an extreme instance, in which there is a Propervirt of less than 0.9%, the TEXT OF THE PRESENT PROSPECTUS may likewise undergo an ABRUPT change. If, while you are reading these sentences, the words be
gin to jump about, and the letters quiver and blur, please interrupt your reading for ten or twenty seconds to wipe your glasses, adjust your clothing, or the like, and then start reading AGAIN from the beginning, and NOT JUST from the place where your reading was interrupted, since such a TRANSFORMATION indicates that a correction of DEFICIENCIES is now taking place.
If, however, the ONLY thing that begins to alter (quiver or blur) is the PRICE (see below) of VESTRAND'S EX-TELOPEDIA, you Do Not Have to read the Complete Prospectus from the beginning, for the alteration will concern solely the subscription terms which—as you will appreciate, considering the state of the world economy—cannot be prognosticated more than twenty-four minutes beforehand.
The above also applies to the full set of pictorial and ancillary material that comes with VESTRAND'S EXTELOPEDIA. This comprises Guided, Mobile, Tactile, and Tasty Illustrations. Here too belong the futudels and auto-constructs (self-constructing aggregates), which we supply with a rack and a complete set of Magnetomes in a separate, aesthetically pleasing case. At your request, we can program the whole containerized Extelopedia so that it responds Exclusively to Your (the Owner's) Voice.
In the event of aphasia, hoarseness, etc., please apply to the nearest VESTRAND BOOKS Agency, which will come to your aid immediately. At the moment, our publishing house is working on new luxury Variants of the Extelopedia, viz.: a Self-Reading version in three voices and two registers (male, female, indeterminate; caressing, dry); an Ultra-Deluxe model, Guaranteed against Disturbances in Reception caused by Outsiders (e.g., the Competition) and furnished with a Private Bar and Rocking Chair; and lastly our UNIVERSIGN model, which is designed for foreigners and transmits the content of each entry by signs. The price of these Special Models will probably be 40 to 190% higher than the price of the standard edition.
Vestrand's EXTELOPEDIA
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PROFESSOR or QUADICOMP
(qualified didactic computer), also CIPHERIAN (q.v), a teaching system permitted in institutes of higher education by the USIB (United States Intellectronical Board, q.v.). See also: ARMPREC (ARMOR-CLAD PRECEPTOR, resistant to the contestational activity of the instructed) and AN-TICONTESTATIONAL TECHNIQUES AND COMBAT METHODS. "Professor" formerly signified a human performing an analogous function. PROFFERTICE, a trade or service offer based on a prognosticated state of the market. Includes civilian p. (PROFFERTINCS) and military p. (PROMILTINCS). 1. PROFFERTINCS are divided into periphertincs, with a time gain of a decade, and apoffertincs, with a gain up to the Glauler barrier (v. GLAULER BARRIER, also PRERRIER and PRODOXES). The interference of competition, or INTETITION (q.v.), arising most often through an illegal connection to the public promputer network (v. PROMPUTER NETWORK), turns profFertincs into PERVER-TINCS (q.v.) or PARASITINCS (q.v.), that is, self-destructive prognoses. (See also: INTETITIVE BANKRUMBLECY, PROG-NOLYSIS, PROGNOCLASE, PROGNOSIS SHIELDING, and COUNTERPREDICTION.) 2. PROMILTINCS are based on predicting the evolution of combat
PROFFSSOR—PROGNODOXKS
methods (hardwarware) and military ideas (softwarware). In its predictions p. uses the algebra of the structures of conflict, or ALGO-STRATICS (q.v.). Secret p., or CRYPTINCS, should be distinguished from prognoses of secret combat, or CRYPTOMACHICAL (q.v.) methods. Secret prognoses of secret weapons are included under CRYPTOCRYPTICS (q.v). PROFLE, a prognosticated rifle, a hunting weapon of the future. V. HUNTING AND SHOOTING, also SYNTHEMACHIES. PROGNODOXES or PRODOXES, paradoxes of prognostication. The most important p. include: A. Rummelhahn's p., M. de la Faillances's p., and the metalang
p. Of GOLEM (v. GOLEM). 1. Rummelhahn's paradox is connected with the problem of breaking the prediction barrier. As T. Glauler and U. Bosc have separately demonstrated, predicting the future gets stuck in the secular barrier (the so-called serrier or prerrier). Beyond the barrier the reliability of prognoses acquires a negative value, which means that whatever occurs will surely occur differently from the prognosis. To bypass the aforementioned barrier, Riimmel-hahn applied chronocurrent exfor-matics. Chronocurrent e. is based on the existence of ISOTHEMES (q.v.). An ISOTHEME is a line in SEMANTIC SPACE (q.v.) passing through all thematically identical publications, just as in physics an isotherm is a line connecting equi-thermal points, and in cosmology an isopsych is a line connecting all civilizations of a given degree of development in the universe. Knowing the previous course of an ISOTHEME, one can extrapolate from it in semantic space with no restrictions. By applying what he calls the "Jacob's ladder method,*' Rummelhahn uncovered every piece of writing with prognostic subject matter along just such an isotheme. He did this step by step, first predicting the content of the next work to come, and then, on the strength of its contents, forecasting the next publication. In this way he bypassed the Gl'auler barrier and obtained data on the state of America in the Year 1010. Mul-lainen and Zuck questioned this prognosis, emphasizing the fact that in the year 1010 the sun will be a red giant (q.v.) extending far beyond the orbit of the Earth. But the real Rummelhahn's paradox lies in the fact that prognostic writings can be traced back along the isotheme as well as forward; basing himself on Rummelhahn's chronocurrent calculations, Varbleux obtained data regarding the content of futurological works dating back 200,000 years, i.e., to the Quaternary period, and also to the Carboniferous period (by means of carbon) and the Archeozoic era. As T. Vroedel has stressed, we know from other sources that 200,000— let alone 150 million or a billion— years ago neither printing, nor books, nor mankind existed. Two hypotheses have tried to explain Rummelhahn's paradox, (a) According to Omphalides, the successfully retrodicted texts are those which, while never having in fact existed, might have existed if at the proper time there had been anyone for whom they could have been written down and published. This is the so-called hypothesis of the VIRTUALITY OF ISOTHEMIC RETROGNOSIS (q.v). (b) According to d'Artagnan (the pseudonym of a group of French refutologists), the axiomatics of isothemic exformatics contain the same insurmountable contradictions as does Cantor's classic theory (v. CLASSIC SET THEORY). 2. De la Faillance's prognostic paradox likewise concerns isothemic prognostication. He noted that if chronocurrent investigation allows the text of a work to be published now, though it is supposed to appear as a first edition only fifty or a hundred years later, then that work can no longer appear as a first edition. 3. The Golem metalang paradox, also known as the autostratic paradox. According to the latest historical research, the temple of Ephesus was burned not by Hero-stratus but by Heterostratus. This person destroyed something outside himself, i.e., something else, hence his name. Autostratus, on the other hand, is someone who destroys himself (self-ruinously). Unfortunately, this is the only part of the Golem paradox that has been successfully translated into comprehensible language to date. The remainder of the Golem paradox, in the form:
Xiviplu (a -f- ququ 0,0) el -f m-el + edu—dqi
is fundamentally untranslatable into ethnic languages or into any formalisms of a mathematical or logical type. (This untranslatability is precisely the basis of the Golem p.) (See also METALANGS and PROGNOLINGUISTICS.) There are several hundred different interpretations of the Golem p.; according to T. Vroedel, one of the greatest living mathematicians, the Golem p. is based on the fact that it is not a paradox to Golem, but only to humans. This is the first paradox discovered to be relativized (related) to the intellectual power of the subjects seeking knowledge. All the issues connected with the Golem p. are covered by Vroeders work Die allgemeine Relativitatslehre des Golemschen Paradoxons (Gottingen, 2075).
PROGNOLINGUISTICS, a discipline dealing with the prognostic construction of languages of the future. Future languages may be constructed on the basis of the in-fosemic gradients revealed in them, and also thanks to the generative grammars and word makers of the Zwiebulin-Tschossnietz school (v. GENAGRAMMAR and WORD-MAKERS). Humans are incapable of predicting languages of the future independently; thi
s is undertaken within the framework of the PROLINGEV (prognostication of linguistic evolution) project by TERATERS (q.v.) and PANTERS (q.v.), which are HYPERTERI-ERS (q.v.), or computers of the eighty-second generation connected to a GLOBOTER (q.v), or a terrestrial exformatic network together with its INTERPLANS (from Interfaciesplanetaris, q.v.) as bridgeheads on inner planets and as satellite memory (q.v.). Thus neither the theory of prognolinguistics nor its fruits, the METALANGS (q.v.), are intelligible to humans. All the same, the results of the PROLINGEV project permit the generation of any statements of one's choice in languages of a future no matter how distant; with the help of RETROLINTERS, a part of them can be translated into languages intelligible to us and practical use made of the contents thus obtained. According to the Zwiebulin-Tschossnietz school (returning to the course marked out by N. Chomsky in the twentieth century), a fundamental law of linguo-evolution is the Amblyon effect —the shrinking of whole articulatory sentences into newly emerging concepts and their names. Hence, in the development of the language, the following definition, for example—"A commercial, service, or administrative institution or establishment into which one can drive a car or any other conveyance and use its services without leaving the vehicle"—shrinks down to the name "drive-in.** The same mechanism of contamination also operates when the statement "Relativistic effects thwarting the ascertainment of that which is occurring now on planet X, n light-years distant from the Earth, compel the Ministry of Extraterrestrial Affairs to base its cosmic policy not on real events on other planets, for they are fundamentally inaccessible, but on the simulated history of these planets, this simulation being the business of investigative systems directed at the extraterrestrial state of things and known as MINISTRANTORS (q.v.)** is replaced by the single phrase "to wonderstand.'* This word (and offshoots such as wonderful, wondrous, wonderland, wonderhanded, wondercover, won-derline, wondress, etc.—there are 519 derivatives) is the result of a shrinking of a certain conceptual network into an agglomeration. Both "drive-in** and "wonderstand** are words belonging to a language in use at the present moment and which is called ZERO-LANG in the prognolinguistic hierarchy. Above zerolang lie the next levels of higher languages, such as METALANG 1, METALANG 2, etc. No one knows whether there is a limit to this series or whether it is infinite. In METALANG 2 the entire text of the present EXTELOPEDIA entry for "PROGNOLINGUISTICS** would read as follows: "The best in n-dighunk begins to creep into n-t-synclusdoche.** Thus in principle every sentence of any metalang has its equivalent in our zerolang. (In other words, there are in principle no interlinguistically impassable hiatuses.) But while a zerolang utterance has its always more concise equivalent in a metalang, the reverse in practice no longer occurs. And so a sentence in METALANG 3, the language chiefly used by Golem—"The out-indriven chokematic phyts faststica" thren-sic in cosmairy"—cannot be translated into an ethnic language of human beings (zerolang), since the time it takes to say the zerolang equivalent would be greater than a human life. (According to Zwie-bulin's estimates, this utterance would take 135 ± 4 years in our language.) Although we are not dealing with a fundamental untrans-latability, but only with a practical one caused by the time consumed by procedures, we know no way of shortening them and so can obtain results from metalang operations only indirectly, thanks to computers of at least the eightieth generation. The existence of thresholds between individual metalangs is interpreted by T. Vroedel as the phenomenon of the vicious circle: to reduce the long definition of a certain state of things to a concise form, one must first understand that very state of things, but when it can be understood only thanks to a definition that is so long that a lifetime is insufficient to assimilate it, the operation of reduction becomes impracticable. According to Vroedel, prognolinguistics practiced in machine intermediation has already gone beyond its initial objective, since it does not in fact predict the languages which humans are ever going to use, unless they radically transform their brains through autoevolution. What, then, are metalangs? There is no single answer. While carrying out his so-called "soundings upward"—i.e., along the gradient of linguoevolution—Golem discovered eighteen higher metalang levels within its reach, and also calculated circuitously the existence of a further five which it is unable to penetrate even by way of a model, since its informational capacity has proved inadequate for this. There may exist metalangs of such high levels that all the matter in the Cosmos would be insufficient to build a system to make use of those metalangs. So in what sense can these higher metalangs be said to exist? This is one of the dilemmas arising in the course of prog-nolinguistic work. In any case, the discovery of metalangs negatively prejudges the age-old controversy over the supremacy of the human intellect: it is not supreme, and we know that for certain now; the very constructibility of metalangs makes it likely that creatures (or systems) exist which are more intelligent than Homo sapiens. (See also PSY-CHOSYNTICS; METALANG GRADIENT; LANGUAGE CEILINGS; THEORY OF LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY; T. VROEDELS CREDO; CONCEPTUAL NETWORKS.) See also Table LXXIX.
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