As soon as possible, big data will be used to actually predict
future as it is seen in the real world. I am not talking about
minor things like predicting some up or down in the stock. I am
thinking wars and such. This technology will fast become more
powerful than any would imagine. The reason it becomes powerful
is that it doesn't have to use people as it's dataset, but
instead it can just use the information fed to the people and
the related information about the effects of the information on
the people.
I expect there are two possibilities. Either there is something
"magical" in how the future society is created, or there isn't.
This can be reflected by the look at the Free Will discussion.
Either people have a soul that can break physical laws or they
don't. On the scale of the whole society, there can be some
Butterly effects, but I don't think they would be so complex
that they couldn't be comfortably calculated.
The only people who you may have to take into account are
some eclectic thinkers who by their originality fall outside
the algorithmic categories. But, lucky for the algorith, we
are getting these people booted out as fast as they can be
discovered.
