Prophecy is something that affects our everyday lives. We could say “now, like never before”, but science fiction doyen Isaac Asimov recognised this when he began writing his famous Foundation series of novels in the 1940s. The potential of big data combined with raw computational power was becoming apparent.
Asimov posed the question: what if human behaviour could be captured with equations? His fictional science of psychohistory explored the potential and peril of algorithmic prophecy.
This idea has itself turned out to be prophetic. Google, Facebook and Twitter are just the most visible modern-day oracles. They hoard as much data about their users as possible. Their purpose is to profile individuals to the point of predicting their behaviour.
Now the Pentagon is hiring coders and data scientists to formulate ways to foresee future crises. Algorithms are being refined that can determine the future success of new products. And that barely scratches the prophecy industry’s surface.
“Humans have always wanted to model the world and try to predict the future,” says Katherine Daniell, professor at ANU’s School of Cybernetics and 3A Institute. “Science and – in some ways – religion are very similar in that way.”
