Predictive Big Data forecloses the future that freedom requires.

Evidence

For human beings to be able to act freely, the future must be open. However, Big Data is making it possible to predict human behaviour. This means that the future is becoming calculable and controllable. Digital psychopolitics transforms the negativity of freely made decisions into the positivity of factual states (Sachverhalte). Indeed, persons are being positivized into things, which can be quantified, measured and steered. Needless to say, no thing can be free. But at the same time, things are more transparent than persons. Big Data has announced the end of the person who possesses free will. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 40

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that free will requires an open future connects to Parable of the Sower’s determinism-versus-agency tension, though distantly. — connects to: Predictive technologies reflect our own desires rather than revealing the future — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 166

Broader Connections

• Predictive technologies reflect our own desires rather than revealing the future #qualifies (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 166