I think construal theory is an interesting but not entirely satisfactory explanation for some of the features of the 'futuristic' aesthetic.
An alternative explanation is that most thinking about the future assumes broad trajectories in civilisational development. In particular, they assume the further expansion of what you might call 'universalised functionalisation', by which I mean the transformation of all human culture into efficiently purposeful objects and their increasingly complete coordination around the same ends. The most striking example ...
I wonder if you think that the Telephone Principle that you mention might be of relevance both as an example and as a possible critique of the methodology you propose in this post. Transformation into a new paradigm might be understood as something like a 'long distance' in epistemic terms. Therefore, we would expect principles active in our current paradigm to be more or less arbitrarily conserved over that epistemic distance.
Do you think the 'distance' in the Telephone Principle can be equally well put into epistemic terms?