You could as easily say that a promise is a promise you've made to produce a piece of data in the future. That's the problem with the term -- it's equally easy to interpret it as the consumption or production side of the equation. As an exercise in skeuomorphism, it's poor, since just like in real life, you can equally give and receive a promise.
That's exactly what a "future" is in trading terms. I think the problem is conflating domains. I'm pretty sure most people will interpret future as "the future" and not as a "future contract".