Machines of prediction and control and the crisis of the possible

Abstract

This work, the result of a discussion carried out in a PhD thesis, analyzes how the possible, a temporal category that belongs to the future, has been increasingly captured by mechanisms of power characteristic of the so-called societies of control. The field of possibilities is being circumscribed today not only by homogenizing visions of the future that predominate in the imaginary (such as the technological future of science fiction), but also by increasingly refined mechanisms of control that predict and induce our next steps, diminishing our ability to choose, our imagination and our subjectivities. This essay analyzes these different forms of hijacking the possible, going through the machinery of modern sciences and financial speculation, until getting to the information currently stored as big data, the data flow fed by the algorithms that control and predict our next choices. The paper questions, at the end, what other types of speculation could, instead of closing the field of possibilities, expand and intensify it, remaining open to difference, uncertainty and contingencies.