PROPHECY

Future shocks.

Véliz, a scholar at the University of Oxford, offers a brisk, lively tour of humanity’s long fascination with foretelling, arguing that prediction and power have always been intertwined and that “predictions are often power moves disguised as quests for knowledge.” Greek soothsayers, relying on “the reading of entrails, birds’ flights, and the stars,” lacked the concept of probability. Later, as Christianity took hold, prediction became the sole jurisdiction of God, with fortune tellers barred from baptism and threatened with death. Véliz threads the insights of thinkers from Cicero to Kant and cites Max Weber’s view that the mathematization of prediction ushered in a rational but spiritually diminished world. The author also delights in the quirks of modern history—Nancy Reagan, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, and Princess Diana consulted astrologers. A standout vignette traces modern insurance back to Edward Lloyd’s dockside coffeehouse, where “Lloyd’s List” began as a practical ledger of sailors’ reports before evolving into a full-blown insurance society. Today, insurance, mortgages, and hiring processes are governed by machine-learning algorithms—prediction engines supercharged by data. “AI is prediction on steroids,” Véliz writes, “and we are now using it not only on the battlefield and in the doctor’s office but everywhere, from the office to the classroom, the courtroom, our roads, our love lives, and beyond.” The book stays tightly focused on the nexus of foresight and power, asserting that digital tools are not neutral but are instruments of surveillance. Prediction algorithms and the companies that deploy them wield astonishing influence. As a result, Véliz warns, democracy now hangs in the balance.

A sharp, engaging, and often unsettling meditation on humanity’s enduring hunger to know—and control—the future.