Summary

Chapter 3 is entitled “Liberty,” and is subtitled “Big Data is Watching You.” In this chapter, the author begins by referencing how feelings essentially function as algorithms, and how historically, liberalism has relied on feelings to define fundamental individual choices in circumstances ranging from voting to choosing a partner to choosing a movie to watch. He offers that algorithms have the potential to know individual human beings better than they know themselves, and therefore also have the potential to make better choices and decisions. He goes on to suggest, however, that while algorithms can potentially enable a more effective sense of individuality, they may simultaneously impede a full sense of freedom which, he adds, is one of the founding principles of true liberalism, even the sort of liberalism at the heart of conservativism. This is the liberalism, he clarifies, that celebrates and...