Chapter 4
Google as God?
The Dangerous Promise of Big Data
As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Almost every activity in the world now leaves numerous digital traces. What if a „wise
king“ or „benevolent dictator“ had real-time access to all the data in the world? Could he
take perfect decisions to benefit society? Could he predict the future? Could he control the
world’s path? What would be the limits and side effects of such an approach? Or is the
attempt to create a digital „crystal ball“ to predict the future and a digital „magic wand“ to
control the world a dangerous dream?
Historically, human civilization developed by establishing mechanisms to
promote cooperation and social order. One such mechanism is based on the idea
that everything we do is seen and judged by God. Bad deeds will be punished, while
good ones will be rewarded. This might be seen as one of the mechanisms through
which religion has established social order. More recently, the information age has
inspired the dream of some keen strategists that we might be able to know everything
about the world ourselves, and to shape it as desired. Would it be possible to acquire
God-like omniscience and omnipotence fueled by Big Data? There are now hopes
and fears that such power lies within the reach of technology and data giants such
as Google or Facebook, or secret services such as the CIA or the National Security
Agency (NSA). In 2013, CIA Chief Technology Officer Ira “Gus” Hunt
1 explained
how easy it is for such institutions to gather a great deal of information about each
of us:
“You’re already a walking sensor platform… You are aware of the fact that
somebody can know where you are at all times because you carry a mobile
1 See: http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-presentation-on-big-data-2013-3?op=1 and https://gig
aom.com/2013/03/20/even-the-cia-is-struggling-to-deal-with-the-volume-of-real-time-social-dat
a/2/. For similar recent FBI priorities see http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/and
rew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Helbing, Next Civilization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2_4
63
Google as God?
The Dangerous Promise of Big Data
As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Almost every activity in the world now leaves numerous digital traces. What if a „wise
king“ or „benevolent dictator“ had real-time access to all the data in the world? Could he
take perfect decisions to benefit society? Could he predict the future? Could he control the
world’s path? What would be the limits and side effects of such an approach? Or is the
attempt to create a digital „crystal ball“ to predict the future and a digital „magic wand“ to
control the world a dangerous dream?
Historically, human civilization developed by establishing mechanisms to
promote cooperation and social order. One such mechanism is based on the idea
that everything we do is seen and judged by God. Bad deeds will be punished, while
good ones will be rewarded. This might be seen as one of the mechanisms through
which religion has established social order. More recently, the information age has
inspired the dream of some keen strategists that we might be able to know everything
about the world ourselves, and to shape it as desired. Would it be possible to acquire
God-like omniscience and omnipotence fueled by Big Data? There are now hopes
and fears that such power lies within the reach of technology and data giants such
as Google or Facebook, or secret services such as the CIA or the National Security
Agency (NSA). In 2013, CIA Chief Technology Officer Ira “Gus” Hunt
1 explained
how easy it is for such institutions to gather a great deal of information about each
of us:
“You’re already a walking sensor platform… You are aware of the fact that
somebody can know where you are at all times because you carry a mobile
1 See: http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-presentation-on-big-data-2013-3?op=1 and https://gig
aom.com/2013/03/20/even-the-cia-is-struggling-to-deal-with-the-volume-of-real-time-social-dat
a/2/. For similar recent FBI priorities see http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/and
rew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
D. Helbing, Next Civilization,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62330-2_4
63