Predictions without Futures explores how our dominant technological futures help maintain decrepit horizons of the social. As Brecht once observed: “I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New.” Prediction supplies a powerful conceptual model for this dynamic of stasis through disruption by connecting technical and mythological attitudes of probabilistic control. I trace some throughlines between the technical conceit of predictivity (that criminality or emotion can be anticipated through data-driven modeling) and the mythological use of prediction (where history is an extrapolation of known technological advancements). Drawing from theories of ritual and experiment, I examine the demonstrative, belief-building work that prediction does – from 18th century automata to Amazon warehouses, from Marvin Minsky to the Year 10,000. What we call “tech” today serves as a legitimising function for capital, and crucial to this function is the active foreclosure of any political future other than more of the same.

Schedule
• 5:30pm – Reception
• 6:00pm – Lecture