Your smartphone, Facebook and Google, they are all being ‘smart’. Meaning they gather a lot of data about you. Nowadays, even cities and governments are becoming smart. For example, police services are experimenting with algorithms which can predict the possibility of criminality based on large amounts of data. Thus, police services can send agents on a preventive basis. Furthermore, data about citizens is not only used for investigations, but it is also taken into account when the government is laying down a policy. Consequently, computers and data will become more and more important in politics.
On one hand, this development seems helpful to reduce crimes and make decisions about government policies easier. On the other hand, we should be aware of the fact that companies and governments are gathering lots of data over the last years thinking they can optimize the world. The main idea is; if you have enough data, the truth will automatically appear, so managers and politicians should do what the data tells them to do. Hence, this is leading to a dictatorship of big data, which makes this development sound quite alarming.
However, due to globalization and digitization, the world has become too complex. In the digital economy everything will namely be connected. Like social networks, infrastructure, electricity and internet of things. This connection also means that everything will be dependent on each other. Therefore, the idea of using a supercomputer which will tell what to do is not very realistic.
If the development continues as it is currently doing at the European Central Bank for instance; stimulating economic growth by buying stock of selected firms instead of only buying government bonds. Then, society will become a planned society where governments decide which companies are doing well and which are performing poorly in the stock market. Justifying their investment choices by huge amounts of big data.
Sources:
http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/08/19/we-bouwen-aan-een-dictatuurvan-data-3333699-a1517178
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/384395/hubfs/blog-files/minority-report.jpg?t=1460641844950 (image)
