In the future, all are likely to contain some implied or explicit form of DISCLAIMER like this:
DISCLAIMER. Sovereign Sky™ is a science fiction short story series written by Stan Larimer to promote his ideas and visions for the future. There are many people, an entire industry in fact, currently seeking to advance ideas that may seem similar to the goals, visions and fictional projects appearing in these stories. Many have no affiliation with the author and some may be in the process of raising funds from time to time. For these reasons, one should be careful to distinguish between real companies and Stan's fictional short stories. Unless he states otherwise in his speeches, interviews and writings, Stan is always talking about his fictional stories and never talking about any specific company whether affiliated with him or not.
In my (fictional) dystopian country there is simply no reason to take the risk of writing or speaking about the real world. Here, you can literally go to prison for 20 years for making a statement you believe to be true that turns out to be false if some government official decides to apply a different definition to some of the words you use.
I can communicate my ideas, visions, and teachings just as well here in my fictional stories ...and then leave it to others to point out how real-world projects do or do not have parallel things that could be said about them.
In my fictional dystopian universe the evil governments of an otherwise wonderful blue planet in a galaxy not that far away have decided to destroy the leaders of a competing (monopoly-threatening) startup industry by nit-picking their public (and even private) speech looking for things that can be construed to be False Statements if you read them the wrong way. You see, in this sad world, it's illegal to say something false, even by accident.
You could say, "I'm going to have a sail," thinking about your catamaran down at the marina and get arrested for not offering your products "on sale" at a discount before they can raid your business to deny you any possibility of doing so.
You could say, "I'm buying a house" meaning that you are in the process of due diligence on a house you have put down an offer on with contingencies that could result in you not buying that house because it has a cracked foundation. Too bad for you! See you in 20 years.
You could say, "I'm partnering with Visa" meaning "I'm going to apply to Visa to use one of their standard services offered to any qualified industrial "partner", only to have the storm troopers kick in the doors looking for your legal documents as formal business partnership papers.
You could start say, "I'll be offering a security, if I can get SEC approval" only to wind up doing hard time if someone interrupts you half way through that sentence and you never get back to finish it.
Turns out, every single one of us have made accidental false statements, probably fairly often if we went back to examine all of them. That's why this evil government strategy is so genius. They can put anybody out of business for 20 years just by willfully misunderstanding something they said. Even if they can't get a conviction, they can completely take down your startup for years while they bankrupt you trying to fight them. You wind up taking a plea bargain for five years in prison just to avoid their threats of 20 years to life.
So that's why I confine all my statements to a fictional world where I am the all-knowing author and sole arbiter of the Truth. Hard to be accused of false statements in a parallel universe that adapts to your every utterance.
See Also: What Science Fiction Has Taught Us About Predicting the Future and Why We Should Be Worried.
