I'm not entirely sure what this means, but it has the ring of genius.
From a letter by Bruce Sterling to John Kessel in 1985,
quoted in Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, pg. 226:
"My feeling is that the time has passed in which SF, in its predictive mode, can successfully utter jeremiads and point out the hazards of the road ahead. This has now become a pointless act from which all meaning has been drained, for the simple fact that the road ahead is almost nothing but hazards. To create a successful work of fiction -- one that will penetrate the protective shell of numbness surrounding the reader -- it is necessary to give up pointing at potholes and instead attempt to search out whatever is left of the road."