Predictive analytics and the creation of the permanent present
Laura E. Smithers
Abstract
This article examines the work of predictive analytics in shaping the social worlds in which they thrive, and in particular the world of the first year of Great State University’s student success initiative. Specifically, this article investigates the following research paradox: predictive analytics, as driven by a logic premised on predicting the future, lock Great State University into a never-ending present. Through Brian Massumi’s concept of a logic of preemption, this paper explores how a quest for proper predictive analytics locked this student success initiative into a hamster wheel of a never-ending present, where the only space and time of action was here and now. It is argued that the function of predictive analytics in higher education is to produce space and time through dividuation and continuous algorithmic variation, freezing both past and future and restricting spacetimes of change to the present.