The future used to be fate, meaning that the ‘not yet’ is a fact of the time to come that is inaccessible to human beings (though not for want of trying) but known to the gods. Modernity's demolition job on fate repositioned the future as something produced by human action, something shaped and defined in the present. Once the future is considered as something made rather than something given, it can become an opportunity, making room for the possibility of the ascending temporal arc of progress. The notion of futurity is a crucial aspect of the ideology of progressive modernity, rooted in a commitment to the accumulation of information and the acquisition of knowledge, and to the economic and social transformations made possible by scientific and technological innovation and discovery. As change accelerates, however, uncertainty tends to increase since the temporal gap between a knowable present and an unknowable future continues to shrink. While the rate of change remains moderate and there is enough data from the past, future outcomes can be calculated probabilistically. But when the future is no longer a continuation of the past, and as change multiplies, the accumulation of past information is no longer helpful. Cut adrift from precedent, the horizon of the future gets closer, no longer a space of empty potentiality but rapidly filling up with the unresolved problems of the present. As the space of anticipation contracts, the chance of being able to think beyond the increasingly shorter term becomes ever more difficult.

The invention of nuclear weapons made a decisive cut into time. More precisely, weapons of mass destruction, especially once they were powerful and plentiful enough to guarantee the destruction of life on earth if even a fraction of their number was ever to be used, contracted and stretched the future at the same time.