8. Automated Predeterminations*

From banal recommendations on what to do or buy next to potentially life-changing automated decision-making by commercial and governmental organisations, predictive technologies increasingly shape our lives and societies. Yet, while much of the future is open and unpredictable, predictive technologies treat it as rather closed and predictable. By so doing, they make it more closed and predictable. They tend to narrow people’s range of options, curtail their freedom, and eliminate possible futures. For these reasons, this chapter argues that predictive technologies should be renamed as automated predeterminations.