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Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
Politics in the Twentieth Century was dominated by a single question: how much of our collective life should be determined by the state, and what should be left to the market and civil society?
Now the debate is different: to what extent should our lives be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms?
Digital technologies - from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality - are transforming the way we live together. Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these powerful entities - usually big
tech firms and the state - will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what may be done and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will determine vital questions of social justice. In their hands, democracy will flourish or decay.
A landmark work of political theory, Future Politics challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and what it means for a political system to be just or democratic. In a time of rapid and relentless changes, it is a book about how we can -
and must - regain control.
Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.
Now the debate is different: to what extent should our lives be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms?
Digital technologies - from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality - are transforming the way we live together. Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these powerful entities - usually big
tech firms and the state - will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what may be done and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will determine vital questions of social justice. In their hands, democracy will flourish or decay.
A landmark work of political theory, Future Politics challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and what it means for a political system to be just or democratic. In a time of rapid and relentless changes, it is a book about how we can -
and must - regain control.
Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.
544 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2018
164 people are currently reading
2224 people want to read
About the author
Jamie Susskind
3 books29 followersJamie Susskind is an author and barrister. He studied history and politics at Oxford University. He later studied law and was appointed as a research fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Jamie practises law at Littleton Chambers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 66 reviews
September 23, 2018
Don't ignore this book if you are turned off by politics, as, despite the title, the theme of the book is how the internet, AI and the future of information and communication technology will impact our lives. Although politics is the primary way this is reflected, the book has a much wider remit - and these technologies are, without doubt, producing sweeping changes that will increasingly have a disruptive impact.
Jamie Susskind starts with a rather breathless (and sometimes over-the-top) vision of the future of these technologies - he admits, like all futurology, what he says will almost certainly be wrong, but argues that just because this is the case doesn't mean we shouldn't examine potential consequences. He then goes on to examine how lives transformed by the internet, AI and mobile technology will have different opportunities and threats in the areas of power (human power, not rate of energy consumption), liberty, impact on democracy and justice.
There is some really interesting material in here - particularly about the power that is increasingly in the hands of tech companies and the ways that democracy could change. Unfortunately, though, this is done in overly-wordy fashion - in this, the book's more like a business book than a science book: it could be a third the length and still contain all the significant material. It's interesting that at one point, Susskind refers to the book The Future of the Professions by his father and brother. That too suffers from excessive repetition, and the business/textbook tendency to have to dream up unnecessary names for things. (At one point in Future Politics, for example, Susskind pointlessly defines 'Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy, Wiki Democracy, Data Democracy and AI Democracy.') But the good news is that this Susskind is a significantly better writer than his father and brother - mostly this book is written in English rather than academic-speak.
Perhaps the weakest part here was the future gazing at the beginning, where Susskind tends to wildly underestimate timescales for, for instance, the immersive adoption of self-driving cars or smart home technology (yes, for example, there are the robotic vacuum cleaners he mentions - but they cost six times as much as an ordinary cleaner and don't do the job as well). What he doesn't seem to get is that just because something is technically possible doesn't mean it will be widely bought into outside early-adopting tech lovers for a considerable time.
Taking an example from a parallel situation: it's perfectly possible to build a zero carbon house - one that has no net carbon emissions in its day-to-day operations. And a few people have. But it will be decades or even centuries before they are dominant, because it would mean replacing most of the existing housing stock, and because even now most new builds aren't zero carbon, because it's too expensive to build them that way.
So, bringing this back to Susskind's examples, I don't think people will be rushing into, say, self-restocking fridges, because again they're far more expensive than the ordinary variety, and most of us like to buy things when we want rather than when a fridge wants. Similarly, I think he vastly underestimates how long it will take self-driving cars to become common. Initially they will be very expensive, and it will take a long time for the majority to trust them. Also Susskind doesn't at all address the psychological problem of adopting them. Fans argue they will reduce deaths on the road. Great. Let's say they reduced the worldwide figure from 1 million to 250,000. That seems wonderful - 750,000 lives saved. But it would be a political minefield. Because those are 750,000 hypothetical lives. But 250,000 actual people will have been killed by self-driving cars - and their families will blame the technology.
It seems, then, that some of the issues Susskind discusses are perhaps a lot farther ahead than he thinks. But we can't dispute, for example, the power already in the hands of social networks, search engines and the like, or the impact that technology is having with democracy. And because those issues are already with us, despite its faults, this is an important book and well worth reading.
Jamie Susskind starts with a rather breathless (and sometimes over-the-top) vision of the future of these technologies - he admits, like all futurology, what he says will almost certainly be wrong, but argues that just because this is the case doesn't mean we shouldn't examine potential consequences. He then goes on to examine how lives transformed by the internet, AI and mobile technology will have different opportunities and threats in the areas of power (human power, not rate of energy consumption), liberty, impact on democracy and justice.
There is some really interesting material in here - particularly about the power that is increasingly in the hands of tech companies and the ways that democracy could change. Unfortunately, though, this is done in overly-wordy fashion - in this, the book's more like a business book than a science book: it could be a third the length and still contain all the significant material. It's interesting that at one point, Susskind refers to the book The Future of the Professions by his father and brother. That too suffers from excessive repetition, and the business/textbook tendency to have to dream up unnecessary names for things. (At one point in Future Politics, for example, Susskind pointlessly defines 'Deliberative Democracy, Direct Democracy, Wiki Democracy, Data Democracy and AI Democracy.') But the good news is that this Susskind is a significantly better writer than his father and brother - mostly this book is written in English rather than academic-speak.
Perhaps the weakest part here was the future gazing at the beginning, where Susskind tends to wildly underestimate timescales for, for instance, the immersive adoption of self-driving cars or smart home technology (yes, for example, there are the robotic vacuum cleaners he mentions - but they cost six times as much as an ordinary cleaner and don't do the job as well). What he doesn't seem to get is that just because something is technically possible doesn't mean it will be widely bought into outside early-adopting tech lovers for a considerable time.
Taking an example from a parallel situation: it's perfectly possible to build a zero carbon house - one that has no net carbon emissions in its day-to-day operations. And a few people have. But it will be decades or even centuries before they are dominant, because it would mean replacing most of the existing housing stock, and because even now most new builds aren't zero carbon, because it's too expensive to build them that way.
So, bringing this back to Susskind's examples, I don't think people will be rushing into, say, self-restocking fridges, because again they're far more expensive than the ordinary variety, and most of us like to buy things when we want rather than when a fridge wants. Similarly, I think he vastly underestimates how long it will take self-driving cars to become common. Initially they will be very expensive, and it will take a long time for the majority to trust them. Also Susskind doesn't at all address the psychological problem of adopting them. Fans argue they will reduce deaths on the road. Great. Let's say they reduced the worldwide figure from 1 million to 250,000. That seems wonderful - 750,000 lives saved. But it would be a political minefield. Because those are 750,000 hypothetical lives. But 250,000 actual people will have been killed by self-driving cars - and their families will blame the technology.
It seems, then, that some of the issues Susskind discusses are perhaps a lot farther ahead than he thinks. But we can't dispute, for example, the power already in the hands of social networks, search engines and the like, or the impact that technology is having with democracy. And because those issues are already with us, despite its faults, this is an important book and well worth reading.
December 12, 2018
This is not so much a political theory of technology as an effort to assess the political implications of a specific technological scenario for the future. Specifically, Susskind is concerned with the political implications of a future in which artificial intelligence applications are produced under their current conditions, e.g. by huge U.S.-based tech firms, on the one, and Chinese state-controlled entities, on the other.
As with many other exercises in futurism, this one is a kind of thought experiment, in which certain dials get turned up to really extreme levels, while (implicitly) others hold themselves more or less constant. The presumption here, for example, is that the primary driver of social change is technology, and specifically, computing technology. Almost no attention is paid to other technologies which may be equally momentous in their political and social implications, notably biotechnology, much less to non-technological drivers of change, ranging from demographic transformations to climate change. The particular future that Susskind concerns himself with is unlikely to be the actual future we will be dealing with by the middle of the century, which appears to be the time horizon to which he is more or less addressing himself.
There’s also very little attention to what Eric Beinhocker (Origins of Wealth, 2006) refers to as “social technologies” — institutions, organizational designs, norms, money, laws, trust, etc. These can change in response to technology, to be sure, but they can also be in motion for their own reasons. Assuming that these are all static and it is technology that is the primary driver of change is a category error.
IBM ad from 1960s about the use of computers in the home....
https://youtu.be/jFWLkthDvuc
With that caveat, Susskind has nonetheless engaged in a highly readable and erudite thought experiment about what the political implications of a pervasive AI future might look like, and his conclusions about appropriate interventions, both intellectually and regulatory, are worth taking seriously.
On the technological side, Susskind calls for engineers to take themselves seriously as philosophers. He is absolutely right that AI labs today are engaged in what might be called practical experiments in the the future of the human — an inherently philosophical question. The good news is that most sites of advanced AI research, at least in the West, are certainly aware that they are nolens volens engaged in philosophical experiments; the less good news is that the people engaged in these experiments are for the most part not trained in thinking philosophically, and thus are designing these experiments in rather clumsy ways. Specifically, they are mostly importing philosophical frameworks that were developed
In fact, today the language of Western philosophy is increasingly rendered inadequate for addressing the implications of artificial intelligence (and biotechnology). The distinction between man and machine, which have been foundational to Western philosophical thinking since at least the seventeenth century, is increasingly unsustainable in the face of AI capabilities
The political implications of the collapse of these distinctions are if anything more radical than Susskind credits them. For in fact Susskind’s own political theory continues to rely on categories like “society,” “nation,” “citizenship,” and “democracy” that themselves rest atop philosophical definitions of the human that these technologies are fast eroding. What does it mean, for example, to speak of citizenship and democratic choice, when increasingly machines are structuring our perception of what choices are even available to us? When increasingly we cannot tell whether our interlocutors in the online public sphere are members of the same community as us, or even whether they are citizens at all, and not just bots, controlled by God news who, or perhaps, indeed, not controlled in any direct way by any specific humans?
Susskind appears to want to figure out how to preserve these traditional categories of political theory in the face of the truly radical technological transformation posed by AI. Thus he proposes government regulation of AI giants. Rejecting the notion that tech giants should be “nationalized,” he suggests that “a more sensible approach would be to regulate private tech firms in a way that gives their power an authentic stamp of legitimacy.” But who exactly is the “we” who Susskind thinks should be empowered to do this regulating. Much of the book is written from the point of view of Britain, and specifically London. Is Susskind imagining that some European regulatory agency should be doing this? Or some post-Brexit regulatory agency based in London? Who exactly will be in control of this regulatory agency, and in who’s interest should this regulation be done? Humanity’s? Europe’s? Little Englands? Bien pensant London intellectuals?
Susskind largely ignores other trends which run against his well-meaning proposals. For example, when he suggests that one approach to improving algorithmic transparency (and thus legitimacy) would be to “entrust the work of algorithmic audit to discrete third party professionals who would take a vow of impartiality and confidentiality,” one can’t help but wonder if he has failed to notice the collapsing faith in expertise — itself not unrelated to the rise of the Internet, which has both disintermediated traditional knowledge gatekeepers and made all too many people feel like if they’ve read an article online then they are an expert too. He concedes that “this idea is attractive but also a little regressive. It leaves us with yet another class of rulers— those who write code and those who audit it—who understand the workings of power while the rest of us remain in the dark and rely on their benevolence and competence.” Well yes, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
What about the implosion of the binary gender distinction?
Even if we accept the tech-centric focus, I would argue that Susskind underestimates the profound radicality of these new technologies. Until the very last few pages, he doesn’t take on board that AI isn’t just going to interfere in our present political habits, but it fact seems likely to queer the very category of what it means to be a human being, and with it the categories of collective humanity, society and nation, which underpin our politics. When we can’t tell the difference between humans and machines — both because the “machines” behave in ways that make them indistinguishable from human behavior, and because many metered-up-the-wazoo humans increasingly are as predictable and manipulable as a (glitchy) piece of software — then who can and should participate in politics becomes profoundly, profoundly vexed.
It may seem as obvious to us that a machine should not participate in politics as it was obvious to Athenians that no slave should participate in politics, but the analogy itself reveals the problem. Conversely, it was only with Descartes that western philosophers asserted that all humans were equal (in their capacity for reason) — a claim that soon became the basis for egalitarian, radically inclusive democratic politics. But if gene-editing and machine-based enhancements mean that in fact some entities (“people” may not even be the right word) are far more capable of reason than others, and for that reason capable of manipulating vast numbers of people who lack the capability to avoid being manipulated, then the premise that rule should happen through representatives chosen by a popular vote becomes massively problematic.
Simply regulating or breaking up the tech giants so that the plutocrats don’t control things, worthy a goal though it may be, doesn’t address these sorts of questions.
The reasons liberals accord such value to individual liberty is because they believe that humans have free will — that, as Yuval Hariri puts it, “the decisions of voters and customers are neither deterministic nor random.” The real political radicalism of these new technologies springs from the way they challenge these assumptions of human agency.
“In the long run,” Susskind notes, “the distinctions between human and machine, online and offline, virtual and real, will fade into the background.” (2) [This is correct, but perhaps not radical enough]
Susskind puts his finger on a key issue when he notes that the people who control these emerging technologies “will increasingly control the rest of us. They’ll have the power… they’ll se the limits of our liberty… they’ll determine the future of democracy… and their algorithms will decide vital questions of social justice.” (3, italics original)
Susskind proposes his book will offer “an intellectual framework that can help to think clearly and critically about the political consequences of digital innovation.” (9)
His point is that digital technologies are “hyper political technologies” in that they “strike at the two most fundamental ingredients of political life: communication and information.” (16)
He is concerned with the “wealth cyclone” whereby the future economy comes to favor only an elite class of owners of the productive technologies, while the majority is left to fight over a shrinking remainder.
“Engineers have been built an AI system capable of writing entire speeches in support of a specified political party. It’s bad enough that politicians sound like soulless robots; now we have soulless robots that sounds like politicians.” (31)
As Susskind observes, AI chatbot learn from their training sets, and reflect the biases of those training sets. He brings up the notorious example of MSFT’s AI chatbot Tay, which was intended to mimic the speech of a 19 year old girl and to learn by interacting with other Twitter users. Within less than a day, Tay had learned that the best way to maximize attention was to tweet racist invective, pictures of Adolf Hitler, and lines like “Fuck my robot pussy daddy I’m such a naughty robot.” (37) Given these proclivities in the Twitter user base, the appeal of Donald Trump’s twitter feed becomes more readily apparent. Conversely, if Russian bots were designed to influence the 2016 American political election by pushing the most divisive buttons within the American body politic, they were only hitting nerves that were already exposed. The heart of the problem lies not with the algorithms, but with us.
“In the digital lifeworld, for practical purposes, we will be who the algorithms say we are, whether we like it or not. Every time code makes a determination about us, it’s a ‘freshly minted algorithmic truth that case little about being authentic but cares a lot about being an effective metric for classification.’ And most of the time we’ll have no idea what’s being concluded about us until (at best) after the event…” (133)
“The widespread adoption of the internet signaled the end of the traditional mass-media monopoly over the means filtering. Alongside the old system emerged a ‘networked information economy’ in which social media and digital news platforms enabled people to be producers and critics of content as well as its consumers.” (145) Susskind doesn’t say so directly, but a crucial feature of this new media environment was also the studied refusal of the new media platforms to police the content being produced and shared. Or rather, they were extremely partial in their policing: pornography and nudity was ruthlessly extirpated from Facebook and YouTube (creating opportunities for other platforms to specialize in these content areas), as were (eventually) jihadi beheading videos. But google, facebook, and twitter remain extremely reluctant to impose limits on “political” speech beyond directly targeted harassment. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, notoriously, suggested that the standard was not truth or falsity but sincerity: asked about whether Facebook should block or remove comments by Holocaust deniers, Zuckerberg replied, “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong … It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent.” One cannot envision a more explicit and complete abdication for policing fake news.
Susskind, somewhat optimistically, anticipates that eventually the humans who formerly acted as moderators and filters “will gradually be replaced by automated programs.” (146) But the question of how the standards will be determined and with what transparency the new rules will be applied is essential. We can imagine an arms race akin to the one that takes place between Google and the Search Engine Optimization firm, except played out around “edgy” political content.
Tech companies are “public utilities.” (156)
The advent of AI threatens not so much freedom of action as freedom of thought, what Susskind calls (following Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit) “republican freedom.” (167) What he means by that is a political community that governs itself free of external interference, with maximal participation in politics , and without arbitrary decisions being made by a higher power. The fear here is that AI can come to serve as a kind of tyrant, in much the same way that the despotic English king did, usurping key decisions from the people.
Susskind comes eventually to discuss the possibilities of cognitive enhancement through AI, and while he acknowledges that these augmentations with their choice architecture, nudges, prompts, reminders and bits of “advice” could gradually slice the salami of free choice, he may underestimate the way that if these technologies are unevenly distributed through the population, with some people enhanced or in control of the enhancements, and others merely subjects of them, it may amplify the subtle but profound disparities of power that already exist within the body politic. (1970) Put another way, the digital lifeworld threatens to disarm the weak of James Scott’s weapons of resistance, “further colonizing this precious hinterland of naughtiness” where liberty resides. (172) If the AIs can both predict your preferences and manipulate them, in what sense do we remain free? This raises a profound existential question which Soren Kierkegaard was among the first to observe: Free choices, the Danish philosopher opined, are what we look back upon and realized we had to do.
4 different ways the state is different from a tech firm
1. “The democratic state is answerable to the people and citizens have a meaningful say in the rules that govern them. Power can be held to account. The same can’t usually be said of most tech firms that operate in the private sector. They make the rules; we live with them.”
2. “The state exists to serve the general interest. A well-functioning government generates laws and policies aimed at the common good. By contrast, tech firms, like all private companies operating in a capitalist paradigm, exist for the commercial benefit of their owners/”
3. “Mature legal systems develop in a systematic way over time according to clear rules and canons. Private code, by contrast, develops in an ad hoc and inconsistent way.”
4. “Technology in the digital lifeworld will be wind-bogglingly complex, and therefore more inscrutable than the government.” As Frank Pasquale puts it, we are increasingly surround by “proprietary algorithms: that are “guarded by a phalanx of lawyers” whose primary goal is to make them “immune from scrutiny.” (192-194)
John Stewart Mill asserted that the sovereignty of the individual over themselves was the bedrock of liberal politics. But it is precisely this sovereignty that AI and biotech are threatening to disrupt. If the AIs can predict our behavior before we even know what we want, on the one hand, or can manipulate our preferences in subliminal ways, in what sense are we sovereign over ourselves? More disturbingly, what if it turns out (as seems likely) that these predictive and manipulative capacities demonstrably work more on some individuals than others? Are the more easily predicted and manipulated really free citizens in the same fashion as those who in fact retain a modicum of autonomy? And if the answer is no, what does that mean for a politics predicated on the equality of all its citizens?
Susskind views the transformations that are taking place with online community formation as “impressive but in the grand arc of democratic history… not revolutionary. Online campaigning and e-government are both new ways of doing old things.” (221) If the extent of the transformations were limited simply to campaigning and putting governmental functions online, Susskind would be correct, but the larger arc is much scarier
Susskind sees six schematic political positions on the relationship between these emerging technologies and governance.
* Digital Libertarianism — meaning freedom from technology no one should be forced to use digital systems
* Digital Liberalism — the “wise restraints” approach, neutral between different conceptions of the good
* Digital Confederalism — focused on the ability (right) of individuals to move between systems, implying that for any category there must be a plurality of available digital systems to choose from
* Digital Paternalism — tech should be designed “to protect people from the harmful consequences of their own actions”
* Digital Moralism — tech should be designed to “steer people away from lives of immorality.”
* Digital Republicanism — no one should be subject to the arbitrary power of those who control digital technologies.
(All of this assumes that the liberal subject remains stable [set this up before exploring the really radicalizing implication of tech that collapses the concept of the autonomous individual political subject. Under those circumstances, many of the conceptions above collapse in incoherence.)
Republicans in the Roman tradition believe that “a restriction imposed by a democratic process is less inimical to freedom than an identical restriction imposed by a private body by virtue of the fact that it was decided democratically.” (207)
Susskind is attempting to forge a political theory of the digital age out of the theoretical flotsam of the pre-digital age.
Perhaps we should ask whether democracy is even worth saving? Susskind asks this question and comes up with five general justifications for democracy: liberty, equality, stability via legitimacy, functional superiority, and the value of enabling homo politicus in Arendt’s sense.
Susskind notes that in the final three months of the 2016 US Presidential campaign, the top twenty fake news stories on FB generated more “engagement” (measured by shares, reactions, and comments) than the top twenty stories from the major news outlets combined. (230)
“If the digital lifeworld falls victim to fragmented reality we’ll have fewer and fewer common terms of reference and shared experiences. If that happens, rational deliberation will become increasingly difficult. How can we agree on anything when the information environment encourages us to disagree on everything?” (231)
What is to be done? One answer is to end online anonymity, which has no place in the political discourse of democratic society. “The Athenians would have scoffed,” notes Susskind, “at the idea that deliberation could take place without revealing who you were.” (232) But Susskind acknowledges that perhaps with online politics deliberation should be seen as private act, done anonymously by individuals in pursuit of their own self-interest, rather than as “something public, done in the open by members of a community in pursuit of the common good.” (232)
As with many other exercises in futurism, this one is a kind of thought experiment, in which certain dials get turned up to really extreme levels, while (implicitly) others hold themselves more or less constant. The presumption here, for example, is that the primary driver of social change is technology, and specifically, computing technology. Almost no attention is paid to other technologies which may be equally momentous in their political and social implications, notably biotechnology, much less to non-technological drivers of change, ranging from demographic transformations to climate change. The particular future that Susskind concerns himself with is unlikely to be the actual future we will be dealing with by the middle of the century, which appears to be the time horizon to which he is more or less addressing himself.
There’s also very little attention to what Eric Beinhocker (Origins of Wealth, 2006) refers to as “social technologies” — institutions, organizational designs, norms, money, laws, trust, etc. These can change in response to technology, to be sure, but they can also be in motion for their own reasons. Assuming that these are all static and it is technology that is the primary driver of change is a category error.
IBM ad from 1960s about the use of computers in the home....
https://youtu.be/jFWLkthDvuc
With that caveat, Susskind has nonetheless engaged in a highly readable and erudite thought experiment about what the political implications of a pervasive AI future might look like, and his conclusions about appropriate interventions, both intellectually and regulatory, are worth taking seriously.
On the technological side, Susskind calls for engineers to take themselves seriously as philosophers. He is absolutely right that AI labs today are engaged in what might be called practical experiments in the the future of the human — an inherently philosophical question. The good news is that most sites of advanced AI research, at least in the West, are certainly aware that they are nolens volens engaged in philosophical experiments; the less good news is that the people engaged in these experiments are for the most part not trained in thinking philosophically, and thus are designing these experiments in rather clumsy ways. Specifically, they are mostly importing philosophical frameworks that were developed
In fact, today the language of Western philosophy is increasingly rendered inadequate for addressing the implications of artificial intelligence (and biotechnology). The distinction between man and machine, which have been foundational to Western philosophical thinking since at least the seventeenth century, is increasingly unsustainable in the face of AI capabilities
The political implications of the collapse of these distinctions are if anything more radical than Susskind credits them. For in fact Susskind’s own political theory continues to rely on categories like “society,” “nation,” “citizenship,” and “democracy” that themselves rest atop philosophical definitions of the human that these technologies are fast eroding. What does it mean, for example, to speak of citizenship and democratic choice, when increasingly machines are structuring our perception of what choices are even available to us? When increasingly we cannot tell whether our interlocutors in the online public sphere are members of the same community as us, or even whether they are citizens at all, and not just bots, controlled by God news who, or perhaps, indeed, not controlled in any direct way by any specific humans?
Susskind appears to want to figure out how to preserve these traditional categories of political theory in the face of the truly radical technological transformation posed by AI. Thus he proposes government regulation of AI giants. Rejecting the notion that tech giants should be “nationalized,” he suggests that “a more sensible approach would be to regulate private tech firms in a way that gives their power an authentic stamp of legitimacy.” But who exactly is the “we” who Susskind thinks should be empowered to do this regulating. Much of the book is written from the point of view of Britain, and specifically London. Is Susskind imagining that some European regulatory agency should be doing this? Or some post-Brexit regulatory agency based in London? Who exactly will be in control of this regulatory agency, and in who’s interest should this regulation be done? Humanity’s? Europe’s? Little Englands? Bien pensant London intellectuals?
Susskind largely ignores other trends which run against his well-meaning proposals. For example, when he suggests that one approach to improving algorithmic transparency (and thus legitimacy) would be to “entrust the work of algorithmic audit to discrete third party professionals who would take a vow of impartiality and confidentiality,” one can’t help but wonder if he has failed to notice the collapsing faith in expertise — itself not unrelated to the rise of the Internet, which has both disintermediated traditional knowledge gatekeepers and made all too many people feel like if they’ve read an article online then they are an expert too. He concedes that “this idea is attractive but also a little regressive. It leaves us with yet another class of rulers— those who write code and those who audit it—who understand the workings of power while the rest of us remain in the dark and rely on their benevolence and competence.” Well yes, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
What about the implosion of the binary gender distinction?
Even if we accept the tech-centric focus, I would argue that Susskind underestimates the profound radicality of these new technologies. Until the very last few pages, he doesn’t take on board that AI isn’t just going to interfere in our present political habits, but it fact seems likely to queer the very category of what it means to be a human being, and with it the categories of collective humanity, society and nation, which underpin our politics. When we can’t tell the difference between humans and machines — both because the “machines” behave in ways that make them indistinguishable from human behavior, and because many metered-up-the-wazoo humans increasingly are as predictable and manipulable as a (glitchy) piece of software — then who can and should participate in politics becomes profoundly, profoundly vexed.
It may seem as obvious to us that a machine should not participate in politics as it was obvious to Athenians that no slave should participate in politics, but the analogy itself reveals the problem. Conversely, it was only with Descartes that western philosophers asserted that all humans were equal (in their capacity for reason) — a claim that soon became the basis for egalitarian, radically inclusive democratic politics. But if gene-editing and machine-based enhancements mean that in fact some entities (“people” may not even be the right word) are far more capable of reason than others, and for that reason capable of manipulating vast numbers of people who lack the capability to avoid being manipulated, then the premise that rule should happen through representatives chosen by a popular vote becomes massively problematic.
Simply regulating or breaking up the tech giants so that the plutocrats don’t control things, worthy a goal though it may be, doesn’t address these sorts of questions.
The reasons liberals accord such value to individual liberty is because they believe that humans have free will — that, as Yuval Hariri puts it, “the decisions of voters and customers are neither deterministic nor random.” The real political radicalism of these new technologies springs from the way they challenge these assumptions of human agency.
“In the long run,” Susskind notes, “the distinctions between human and machine, online and offline, virtual and real, will fade into the background.” (2) [This is correct, but perhaps not radical enough]
Susskind puts his finger on a key issue when he notes that the people who control these emerging technologies “will increasingly control the rest of us. They’ll have the power… they’ll se the limits of our liberty… they’ll determine the future of democracy… and their algorithms will decide vital questions of social justice.” (3, italics original)
Susskind proposes his book will offer “an intellectual framework that can help to think clearly and critically about the political consequences of digital innovation.” (9)
His point is that digital technologies are “hyper political technologies” in that they “strike at the two most fundamental ingredients of political life: communication and information.” (16)
He is concerned with the “wealth cyclone” whereby the future economy comes to favor only an elite class of owners of the productive technologies, while the majority is left to fight over a shrinking remainder.
“Engineers have been built an AI system capable of writing entire speeches in support of a specified political party. It’s bad enough that politicians sound like soulless robots; now we have soulless robots that sounds like politicians.” (31)
As Susskind observes, AI chatbot learn from their training sets, and reflect the biases of those training sets. He brings up the notorious example of MSFT’s AI chatbot Tay, which was intended to mimic the speech of a 19 year old girl and to learn by interacting with other Twitter users. Within less than a day, Tay had learned that the best way to maximize attention was to tweet racist invective, pictures of Adolf Hitler, and lines like “Fuck my robot pussy daddy I’m such a naughty robot.” (37) Given these proclivities in the Twitter user base, the appeal of Donald Trump’s twitter feed becomes more readily apparent. Conversely, if Russian bots were designed to influence the 2016 American political election by pushing the most divisive buttons within the American body politic, they were only hitting nerves that were already exposed. The heart of the problem lies not with the algorithms, but with us.
“In the digital lifeworld, for practical purposes, we will be who the algorithms say we are, whether we like it or not. Every time code makes a determination about us, it’s a ‘freshly minted algorithmic truth that case little about being authentic but cares a lot about being an effective metric for classification.’ And most of the time we’ll have no idea what’s being concluded about us until (at best) after the event…” (133)
“The widespread adoption of the internet signaled the end of the traditional mass-media monopoly over the means filtering. Alongside the old system emerged a ‘networked information economy’ in which social media and digital news platforms enabled people to be producers and critics of content as well as its consumers.” (145) Susskind doesn’t say so directly, but a crucial feature of this new media environment was also the studied refusal of the new media platforms to police the content being produced and shared. Or rather, they were extremely partial in their policing: pornography and nudity was ruthlessly extirpated from Facebook and YouTube (creating opportunities for other platforms to specialize in these content areas), as were (eventually) jihadi beheading videos. But google, facebook, and twitter remain extremely reluctant to impose limits on “political” speech beyond directly targeted harassment. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, notoriously, suggested that the standard was not truth or falsity but sincerity: asked about whether Facebook should block or remove comments by Holocaust deniers, Zuckerberg replied, “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong … It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent.” One cannot envision a more explicit and complete abdication for policing fake news.
Susskind, somewhat optimistically, anticipates that eventually the humans who formerly acted as moderators and filters “will gradually be replaced by automated programs.” (146) But the question of how the standards will be determined and with what transparency the new rules will be applied is essential. We can imagine an arms race akin to the one that takes place between Google and the Search Engine Optimization firm, except played out around “edgy” political content.
Tech companies are “public utilities.” (156)
The advent of AI threatens not so much freedom of action as freedom of thought, what Susskind calls (following Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit) “republican freedom.” (167) What he means by that is a political community that governs itself free of external interference, with maximal participation in politics , and without arbitrary decisions being made by a higher power. The fear here is that AI can come to serve as a kind of tyrant, in much the same way that the despotic English king did, usurping key decisions from the people.
Susskind comes eventually to discuss the possibilities of cognitive enhancement through AI, and while he acknowledges that these augmentations with their choice architecture, nudges, prompts, reminders and bits of “advice” could gradually slice the salami of free choice, he may underestimate the way that if these technologies are unevenly distributed through the population, with some people enhanced or in control of the enhancements, and others merely subjects of them, it may amplify the subtle but profound disparities of power that already exist within the body politic. (1970) Put another way, the digital lifeworld threatens to disarm the weak of James Scott’s weapons of resistance, “further colonizing this precious hinterland of naughtiness” where liberty resides. (172) If the AIs can both predict your preferences and manipulate them, in what sense do we remain free? This raises a profound existential question which Soren Kierkegaard was among the first to observe: Free choices, the Danish philosopher opined, are what we look back upon and realized we had to do.
4 different ways the state is different from a tech firm
1. “The democratic state is answerable to the people and citizens have a meaningful say in the rules that govern them. Power can be held to account. The same can’t usually be said of most tech firms that operate in the private sector. They make the rules; we live with them.”
2. “The state exists to serve the general interest. A well-functioning government generates laws and policies aimed at the common good. By contrast, tech firms, like all private companies operating in a capitalist paradigm, exist for the commercial benefit of their owners/”
3. “Mature legal systems develop in a systematic way over time according to clear rules and canons. Private code, by contrast, develops in an ad hoc and inconsistent way.”
4. “Technology in the digital lifeworld will be wind-bogglingly complex, and therefore more inscrutable than the government.” As Frank Pasquale puts it, we are increasingly surround by “proprietary algorithms: that are “guarded by a phalanx of lawyers” whose primary goal is to make them “immune from scrutiny.” (192-194)
John Stewart Mill asserted that the sovereignty of the individual over themselves was the bedrock of liberal politics. But it is precisely this sovereignty that AI and biotech are threatening to disrupt. If the AIs can predict our behavior before we even know what we want, on the one hand, or can manipulate our preferences in subliminal ways, in what sense are we sovereign over ourselves? More disturbingly, what if it turns out (as seems likely) that these predictive and manipulative capacities demonstrably work more on some individuals than others? Are the more easily predicted and manipulated really free citizens in the same fashion as those who in fact retain a modicum of autonomy? And if the answer is no, what does that mean for a politics predicated on the equality of all its citizens?
Susskind views the transformations that are taking place with online community formation as “impressive but in the grand arc of democratic history… not revolutionary. Online campaigning and e-government are both new ways of doing old things.” (221) If the extent of the transformations were limited simply to campaigning and putting governmental functions online, Susskind would be correct, but the larger arc is much scarier
Susskind sees six schematic political positions on the relationship between these emerging technologies and governance.
* Digital Libertarianism — meaning freedom from technology no one should be forced to use digital systems
* Digital Liberalism — the “wise restraints” approach, neutral between different conceptions of the good
* Digital Confederalism — focused on the ability (right) of individuals to move between systems, implying that for any category there must be a plurality of available digital systems to choose from
* Digital Paternalism — tech should be designed “to protect people from the harmful consequences of their own actions”
* Digital Moralism — tech should be designed to “steer people away from lives of immorality.”
* Digital Republicanism — no one should be subject to the arbitrary power of those who control digital technologies.
(All of this assumes that the liberal subject remains stable [set this up before exploring the really radicalizing implication of tech that collapses the concept of the autonomous individual political subject. Under those circumstances, many of the conceptions above collapse in incoherence.)
Republicans in the Roman tradition believe that “a restriction imposed by a democratic process is less inimical to freedom than an identical restriction imposed by a private body by virtue of the fact that it was decided democratically.” (207)
Susskind is attempting to forge a political theory of the digital age out of the theoretical flotsam of the pre-digital age.
Perhaps we should ask whether democracy is even worth saving? Susskind asks this question and comes up with five general justifications for democracy: liberty, equality, stability via legitimacy, functional superiority, and the value of enabling homo politicus in Arendt’s sense.
Susskind notes that in the final three months of the 2016 US Presidential campaign, the top twenty fake news stories on FB generated more “engagement” (measured by shares, reactions, and comments) than the top twenty stories from the major news outlets combined. (230)
“If the digital lifeworld falls victim to fragmented reality we’ll have fewer and fewer common terms of reference and shared experiences. If that happens, rational deliberation will become increasingly difficult. How can we agree on anything when the information environment encourages us to disagree on everything?” (231)
What is to be done? One answer is to end online anonymity, which has no place in the political discourse of democratic society. “The Athenians would have scoffed,” notes Susskind, “at the idea that deliberation could take place without revealing who you were.” (232) But Susskind acknowledges that perhaps with online politics deliberation should be seen as private act, done anonymously by individuals in pursuit of their own self-interest, rather than as “something public, done in the open by members of a community in pursuit of the common good.” (232)
November 10, 2019
‘Future Politics’ oscillated between one and four stars for me. The content itself was interesting but was let down by the author’s lack of elegance in presenting his ‘foundational’ framework for considering the problems that new technologies pose if left unregulated, and also by his writing style. The book reads like a first-year undergraduate textbook; it goes to painstaking lengths to describe every term that’s even vaguely mentioned, in a format which could easily be transferred onto cue cards. The writing frequently uses irritating asides, such as 'At this point in the book (well done on making it this far, by the way).'
The author also seems to think that the premise of the book – basically, that new technology requires new regulation – is revolutionary, despite the idea being pretty mainstream at this point (there’s even an entire Guardian podcast on this topic called ‘Chips with Everything’).
The author also seems to think that the premise of the book – basically, that new technology requires new regulation – is revolutionary, despite the idea being pretty mainstream at this point (there’s even an entire Guardian podcast on this topic called ‘Chips with Everything’).
June 3, 2020
The book wasn't as good as I was hoping, especially given the very promising overview; it certainly achieves what it sets out to do but without much breadth, ambition nor foresight.
It essentially serves as a refresher of basic political ideas but for what it perceives to be the forthcoming technological century. It presents a hypothesis that the world (especially its political sphere) will be shaped predominantly by three changes heralded by inexorable technological advance: "capable systems", "integrated technology" and "quantified society". It then examines how these might reshape the nature of power, liberty, democracy, justice, and the fundamental notion of the political community in the coming century. Even if its themes were occasionally a little stale (for example, acting as if the impending agglomeration of massive amounts of power, wealth and force into a few private companies who will be able to rival the state was an original idea that few have failed to recognise), they are consistently relevant and important.
I did, however, have reservations:
The author exhibits a rather annoying habit of fatuous quoting - quoting seminal philosophers like Isaiah Berlin and Ludwig Wittgenstein clearly strengthens the arguments made by resting them on foundational structures of thinking, but is it really necessary to quote John F. Kennedy's remarks on the "survival and success of liberty"? That is neither an idea that he came up with, nor an idea at all; I do not see the point. And this is a recurring habit.
Additionally, I didn't like the occasional touches that seemed to appeal to a wider popular audience; this is a serious book, get on with it. I refer to moments where the author, having written pages and pages filled with complex and insightful argumentation and ideation, then makes the kind of comment you'd expect to find in a Saturday magazine column - "At this point in the book (well done on making it this far, by the way", or "I know, I know, we're a strange family", he remarks, when drawing upon his father's research.
Beyond poor stylistic choices, I do also have issues with his view of the future; despite implicitly criticising techno-utopianism (in the aspect of its panacean appeal), he does not bother opposing techno-utopianism in terms of the unshakeable conviction in its inexorable march onward. This book was published in 2018, and made some very ambitious predictions about the pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives just a few years later - 2 years later, this has yet to come to fruition. The author seems not to recognise that the capability to achieve something does not equate to its occurrence. We could redefine global politics if we got rid of all nuclear weapons, but will we?
This techno-utopianism further spills out into his very idealistic, optimistic view that technology will consistently - or at least, most of the time - be used in meaningful, thoughtful and helpful ways to maximise our welfare. How likely is this? He includes a short chapter on the nature of firms and monopolies in a technological future, but it seems almost offhand and apologetic, when one of the most crucial debates today surrounding technology is that of ownership, the exercise of power and intellectual rights of property.
Also, the Silicon-Valley-esque viewpoint means that technology is the single defining feature of his world. The rise of populism and increasing polarisation in the developed world? Nope. How about the gradual turn to democracy being witnessed in developing countries? Nope. Climate change? Doesn't warrant any mention. Refugee crises? Again, not a feature at all. Everything seems to boil down to technology, and even those salient issues he does touch on - social media and its effects on truth and political activism, for example - are all viewed only through this single lens. It's simply too narrow a focus for a book that ambitiously titles itself "Future Politics".
Speaking of ambition; the book is rather lacking in it. Admittedly, it might be too much to ask for a completely refreshing set of ideas, but often I felt that the author, despite his allusions to current political ideas being tired out and inappropriate for our transformed future, was merely taking existing ideas - liberalism, republicanism, confederacy and democracy, to take just a few examples, and reshaping them and their boundaries to fit a world suffused with technology. It was more of, "how will our ideas work in a technological future?" than "what ideas can we approach our future with?", which was rather disappointing.
Furthermore, though this might perhaps be understandable given that the book sets itself up as a sketch; a prospect, rather than an agenda, the constant listing without evaluation, selection or consideration did get somewhat frustrating. Which would be more likely to work than others? Which would more likely come to pass? How might we get there? These are, again, critical questions that simply go unanswered.
Even with the way he grapples with technology itself, I did find myself having queries. Encryption is often mentioned as a simple solution to such issues as data privacy, confidentiality and security; yet at other points in the book the author suggests that it is important the general public have a greater say in technological politics. Encryption is incredibly complex - it is unlikely that it would be understood outside of a very narrow stratum of qualified engineers and scientists. How democratic would it be to simply say, "don't worry, we can just encrypt it?"
When referring to the rise of intelligent, self-aware machines in tandem with the harm principle, the author gives us 11 questions considering the line between acceptable and unacceptable overrides against harm to self - but how realistic is it for machines to be able to process and consider all of these in a quantifiable, definite way? And further make a judgement between these possibly opposing considerations?
The author argues that "we don't need to decide" between justice in distribution and recognition - but don't we? Humans, of course, being numerous, capricious and easily subject to influence, can shift their stance and confidently make conscious qualitative judgements - but technology? Machines can't make normative judgments! Who should say that one engineer at, say, Amazon, should be allowed to make these crucial decisions that will then shape the lives of everyone on planet Earth?
There are some consolations - this being primarily a thought experiment, there are some extremely provocative questions raised. The determinism implied by predictive policing suggests that there is no immoral individual action; that our acts are determined only by circumstances and predictable factors? The consequent ethics of policing rather than preventive action? This was an entirely novel view of a commonly discussed issue, and I did learn much from this perspective. Another example was the automation of morality and the loss of humanity inherent in that; I'd never really stopped to consider that technology might ironically obviate the very thing that makes us inherently human.
But while there might be flecks of gold, it's ultimately a disappointment; a fun read, perhaps, but not exactly what I'd call 'insightful'.
It essentially serves as a refresher of basic political ideas but for what it perceives to be the forthcoming technological century. It presents a hypothesis that the world (especially its political sphere) will be shaped predominantly by three changes heralded by inexorable technological advance: "capable systems", "integrated technology" and "quantified society". It then examines how these might reshape the nature of power, liberty, democracy, justice, and the fundamental notion of the political community in the coming century. Even if its themes were occasionally a little stale (for example, acting as if the impending agglomeration of massive amounts of power, wealth and force into a few private companies who will be able to rival the state was an original idea that few have failed to recognise), they are consistently relevant and important.
I did, however, have reservations:
The author exhibits a rather annoying habit of fatuous quoting - quoting seminal philosophers like Isaiah Berlin and Ludwig Wittgenstein clearly strengthens the arguments made by resting them on foundational structures of thinking, but is it really necessary to quote John F. Kennedy's remarks on the "survival and success of liberty"? That is neither an idea that he came up with, nor an idea at all; I do not see the point. And this is a recurring habit.
Additionally, I didn't like the occasional touches that seemed to appeal to a wider popular audience; this is a serious book, get on with it. I refer to moments where the author, having written pages and pages filled with complex and insightful argumentation and ideation, then makes the kind of comment you'd expect to find in a Saturday magazine column - "At this point in the book (well done on making it this far, by the way", or "I know, I know, we're a strange family", he remarks, when drawing upon his father's research.
Beyond poor stylistic choices, I do also have issues with his view of the future; despite implicitly criticising techno-utopianism (in the aspect of its panacean appeal), he does not bother opposing techno-utopianism in terms of the unshakeable conviction in its inexorable march onward. This book was published in 2018, and made some very ambitious predictions about the pervasiveness of technology in our daily lives just a few years later - 2 years later, this has yet to come to fruition. The author seems not to recognise that the capability to achieve something does not equate to its occurrence. We could redefine global politics if we got rid of all nuclear weapons, but will we?
This techno-utopianism further spills out into his very idealistic, optimistic view that technology will consistently - or at least, most of the time - be used in meaningful, thoughtful and helpful ways to maximise our welfare. How likely is this? He includes a short chapter on the nature of firms and monopolies in a technological future, but it seems almost offhand and apologetic, when one of the most crucial debates today surrounding technology is that of ownership, the exercise of power and intellectual rights of property.
Also, the Silicon-Valley-esque viewpoint means that technology is the single defining feature of his world. The rise of populism and increasing polarisation in the developed world? Nope. How about the gradual turn to democracy being witnessed in developing countries? Nope. Climate change? Doesn't warrant any mention. Refugee crises? Again, not a feature at all. Everything seems to boil down to technology, and even those salient issues he does touch on - social media and its effects on truth and political activism, for example - are all viewed only through this single lens. It's simply too narrow a focus for a book that ambitiously titles itself "Future Politics".
Speaking of ambition; the book is rather lacking in it. Admittedly, it might be too much to ask for a completely refreshing set of ideas, but often I felt that the author, despite his allusions to current political ideas being tired out and inappropriate for our transformed future, was merely taking existing ideas - liberalism, republicanism, confederacy and democracy, to take just a few examples, and reshaping them and their boundaries to fit a world suffused with technology. It was more of, "how will our ideas work in a technological future?" than "what ideas can we approach our future with?", which was rather disappointing.
Furthermore, though this might perhaps be understandable given that the book sets itself up as a sketch; a prospect, rather than an agenda, the constant listing without evaluation, selection or consideration did get somewhat frustrating. Which would be more likely to work than others? Which would more likely come to pass? How might we get there? These are, again, critical questions that simply go unanswered.
Even with the way he grapples with technology itself, I did find myself having queries. Encryption is often mentioned as a simple solution to such issues as data privacy, confidentiality and security; yet at other points in the book the author suggests that it is important the general public have a greater say in technological politics. Encryption is incredibly complex - it is unlikely that it would be understood outside of a very narrow stratum of qualified engineers and scientists. How democratic would it be to simply say, "don't worry, we can just encrypt it?"
When referring to the rise of intelligent, self-aware machines in tandem with the harm principle, the author gives us 11 questions considering the line between acceptable and unacceptable overrides against harm to self - but how realistic is it for machines to be able to process and consider all of these in a quantifiable, definite way? And further make a judgement between these possibly opposing considerations?
The author argues that "we don't need to decide" between justice in distribution and recognition - but don't we? Humans, of course, being numerous, capricious and easily subject to influence, can shift their stance and confidently make conscious qualitative judgements - but technology? Machines can't make normative judgments! Who should say that one engineer at, say, Amazon, should be allowed to make these crucial decisions that will then shape the lives of everyone on planet Earth?
There are some consolations - this being primarily a thought experiment, there are some extremely provocative questions raised. The determinism implied by predictive policing suggests that there is no immoral individual action; that our acts are determined only by circumstances and predictable factors? The consequent ethics of policing rather than preventive action? This was an entirely novel view of a commonly discussed issue, and I did learn much from this perspective. Another example was the automation of morality and the loss of humanity inherent in that; I'd never really stopped to consider that technology might ironically obviate the very thing that makes us inherently human.
But while there might be flecks of gold, it's ultimately a disappointment; a fun read, perhaps, but not exactly what I'd call 'insightful'.
November 14, 2018
Excellent discussion of how the realm of politics, like everything else in our society, is being transformed by technology. If you like Yuval Noah Harari's futurist writing (i.e. Homo Deus and 21 Lessons) and have any interest in politics, you'll enjoy Susskind's thoughtful work here. The book flows nicely, an easy read. He's very organized and methodical in his writing, breaking everything down categorically ("On the subject of X, you need to know A, B, and C. Regarding A, there are five things to consider. First..., Second..., etc."). Highly recommended. Solid treatment of a very important subject that seems to be off the radar screen of most real-world politicians and voters.
January 29, 2025
"Datele sunt esențiale pentru învăţarea automată. Dacă sunt prea puţine, un algoritm de învăţare automată nu se va putea dezvolta, dar dacă sunt suficiente, „un program de învăţare lung de numai câteva sute de linii poate să genereze cu ușurință un program cu milioane de linii şi poate face acest lucru în mod repetat, pentru probleme diferite". De aceea, datele au fost numite „noul cărbune", iar cei care le culeg sunt numiți „mineri de date" (data miners). (...)
Pe măsură ce activitatea socială este înregistrată din ce în ce mai mult sub forma datelor, sisteme dotate cu o excepțională putere de calcul vor putea să alcătuiască hărţi digitale din ce în ce mai fidele ale vieţii oamenilor - hărţi imense, incredibil de detaliate, actualizate în timp real. Aceste diagrame, bazate pe informații extrase din lumea reală, dar oglindind-o cu fidelitate, vor fi de neprețuit nu numai pentru cei care doresc să ne vândă diverse lucruri, ci şi pentru cei care caută să înțeleagă și să influenţeze existenţa noastră colectivă. lar atunci când autorităţile politice folosesc datele nu numai pentru studierea sau influenţarea comportamentului uman, ci şi pentru a prevedea ceea ce urmează să se întâmple chiar înainte ca noi să ştim acest lucru - indiferent că este vorba despre un infractor care va recidiva sau despre un bolnav care va muri - implicaţiile sunt profunde. Aşa cum am arătat în introducere, întotdeauna a existat o legătură strânsă între informaţii şi control. Într-o societate tot mai cuantificată, această legătură capătă o importanţă şi mai mare."
Pe măsură ce activitatea socială este înregistrată din ce în ce mai mult sub forma datelor, sisteme dotate cu o excepțională putere de calcul vor putea să alcătuiască hărţi digitale din ce în ce mai fidele ale vieţii oamenilor - hărţi imense, incredibil de detaliate, actualizate în timp real. Aceste diagrame, bazate pe informații extrase din lumea reală, dar oglindind-o cu fidelitate, vor fi de neprețuit nu numai pentru cei care doresc să ne vândă diverse lucruri, ci şi pentru cei care caută să înțeleagă și să influenţeze existenţa noastră colectivă. lar atunci când autorităţile politice folosesc datele nu numai pentru studierea sau influenţarea comportamentului uman, ci şi pentru a prevedea ceea ce urmează să se întâmple chiar înainte ca noi să ştim acest lucru - indiferent că este vorba despre un infractor care va recidiva sau despre un bolnav care va muri - implicaţiile sunt profunde. Aşa cum am arătat în introducere, întotdeauna a existat o legătură strânsă între informaţii şi control. Într-o societate tot mai cuantificată, această legătură capătă o importanţă şi mai mare."
March 7, 2021
Foarte puține (spre deloc) idei originale și o expunere plictisitoare a celor deja arhi-cunoscute (de exemplu, șomajul tehnologic).
March 17, 2021
If you wanted to read just one book on how tech affects society, let this be it.
Susskind argues that as tech gets increasingly embedded in our daily lives, its effects on society are necessarily political; thereby requiring ideas from political theory to grasp. At the same time, he recognizes that for a world that's transforming so rapidly, these ideas, that were meant for a past world, will have to be looked at afresh.
'Future Politics' analyzes implications of tech on four core political concepts: power, liberty, democracy and justice. For me, the book's strength lies in how Susskind is able to break down each little concept into comprehensive categories until it is explainable in plain language. Susskind's efforts towards clearly defining terms and concepts makes the book a comfortable read.
There are a few shortcomings. Since it covers a lot of breadth, naturally depth is missing. At times, Susskind overestimates the likelihood of certain future scenarios. But in view of the importance of the topic and the ambitious undertaking, the shortcomings are forgiven.
I can't recommend this book enough. It's a one-stop shop for an accessible glimpse into the plethora of political implications of tech. Read this for understanding a framework on how to view such implications.
Susskind argues that as tech gets increasingly embedded in our daily lives, its effects on society are necessarily political; thereby requiring ideas from political theory to grasp. At the same time, he recognizes that for a world that's transforming so rapidly, these ideas, that were meant for a past world, will have to be looked at afresh.
'Future Politics' analyzes implications of tech on four core political concepts: power, liberty, democracy and justice. For me, the book's strength lies in how Susskind is able to break down each little concept into comprehensive categories until it is explainable in plain language. Susskind's efforts towards clearly defining terms and concepts makes the book a comfortable read.
There are a few shortcomings. Since it covers a lot of breadth, naturally depth is missing. At times, Susskind overestimates the likelihood of certain future scenarios. But in view of the importance of the topic and the ambitious undertaking, the shortcomings are forgiven.
I can't recommend this book enough. It's a one-stop shop for an accessible glimpse into the plethora of political implications of tech. Read this for understanding a framework on how to view such implications.
July 25, 2023
It is a timely book to discuss the concepts of power, politics, liberty, democracy and social justice in digital era shaped by algorithms and their creators. Good discussion on digitalisation of power , need to shift to digital law to prevent the power of systems instead of human . The links between the law made through centuries after the experiences of humanity and rules shaping and dominating through algorithms created by some tech guys without the background of principles of humanity or at least not caring about with preference on monetary benefits are described well. References to how the law and thoughts around it and evolution through human thinking by centuries are also a good anchor to the discussion in the book. A good reading to think about the concepts like future digital republicanism , digital law or digital morality. It is timely , because this is the time to decide and shape . If it is later , digital divide and discrimination will be dominating the world.
January 20, 2025
foarte interesantă pe alocuri, pune multe semne de întrebare cu privire la viitorul tot mai tehnologizat și bazat pe codul informatic și inteligența artificială. sunt și momente prea alambicate în carte și multe presupoziții sau scenarii de lucru, de care chiar autorul spune că sunt reprobabile. una peste alta îți dă de gândit cum ar trebui să arate politica în fața unui viitor tot mai puțin controlat de societate în ansamblu prin reprezentații ei politici, cu o putere tot mai concentrată în mâna câtorva moguli care controlează cam tot ce mișcă în domeniul inteligenței artificiale tot mai prezentă în toate aspectele vieții.
February 11, 2020
A decent application of post-modernist thought to the practical applications and uses of technology in our modern society. A great introduction to anyone who wants to understand just how insipid and pervasive technology can be in undermining some of the fundamental organizing principles of our modern society.
August 14, 2021
Perfect book to understand implications of technology on the politics of future.
October 26, 2019
On 23 October 2019 Google announced it had cracked Quantum Computing. It just about got into the BBC news headlines. Having read Susskind's book, I suspect it will turn out to have been the most important thing announced that day by a long chalk. Certainly more important than Brexit.
Whilst Susskind does everything he can to make his complex subject understandable, it's a tough read. Jeez, on pg 361 he even congratulates the reader for getting that far. But being difficult shouldn't stop non-scientists/technologists/politicians/philosophers like myself from trying to get to grips with this stuff.
Susskind argues the case that we are standing at the edge of what he calls the digital lifeworld - a world populated by digital systems that surpass humans across a wide range of functions. The world will be permeated by these systems. I'm not convinced I'm going to be buying a digital fridge that tells me to buy more cheese or eat fewer Danish pastries any time soon, but I take his point. I already have a heating system that could tell you when I get up, go on holiday, or have a menopausal hot flush.
We're going to be producing oodles of data which will be sorted, stored and processed either by governments or by a vanishingly small number of commercial companies or both.
These organisations will have sufficient power to be able to force us to do things we'd rather not - by threatening, influencing and scrutinizing us. And by changing our perceptions of the world (think China airbrushing out references Tienanmen Square on their internet).
Scary stuff. What can we do about it? First thing I suggest is to put ethics on the curriculum for all tech courses so none of our programmers comes out thinking algorithms are neutral.
I question Susskind's wisdom in calling the book Future Politics. (The subtitle is very small.) He means politics in the sense of the way we organise our society. To anyone picks it up thinking there might be answers to our current parliamentary shenanigans I say, move along, nothing to see here.
One other thing: Jamie Susskind is ridiculously young to have written a book of this weight. He looks about 30 and is a practising barrister. There are 52 pages of bibliography: possibly hundreds of books and articles. When the hell did he get time to read them? Is he living proof of that lovely Richard Curtis film About Time where the hero can go back and re-live each day, thus being able to read endlessly?
Whilst Susskind does everything he can to make his complex subject understandable, it's a tough read. Jeez, on pg 361 he even congratulates the reader for getting that far. But being difficult shouldn't stop non-scientists/technologists/politicians/philosophers like myself from trying to get to grips with this stuff.
Susskind argues the case that we are standing at the edge of what he calls the digital lifeworld - a world populated by digital systems that surpass humans across a wide range of functions. The world will be permeated by these systems. I'm not convinced I'm going to be buying a digital fridge that tells me to buy more cheese or eat fewer Danish pastries any time soon, but I take his point. I already have a heating system that could tell you when I get up, go on holiday, or have a menopausal hot flush.
We're going to be producing oodles of data which will be sorted, stored and processed either by governments or by a vanishingly small number of commercial companies or both.
These organisations will have sufficient power to be able to force us to do things we'd rather not - by threatening, influencing and scrutinizing us. And by changing our perceptions of the world (think China airbrushing out references Tienanmen Square on their internet).
"The state will gain a supercharged ability to enforce the law and certain powerful tech firms will be able to define the limits of our liberty, determine the health of our democracy, and decide vital questions of social justice. " pg 346.We are also going to have an even wider gap between the super-wealthy and everyone else.
Scary stuff. What can we do about it? First thing I suggest is to put ethics on the curriculum for all tech courses so none of our programmers comes out thinking algorithms are neutral.
I question Susskind's wisdom in calling the book Future Politics. (The subtitle is very small.) He means politics in the sense of the way we organise our society. To anyone picks it up thinking there might be answers to our current parliamentary shenanigans I say, move along, nothing to see here.
One other thing: Jamie Susskind is ridiculously young to have written a book of this weight. He looks about 30 and is a practising barrister. There are 52 pages of bibliography: possibly hundreds of books and articles. When the hell did he get time to read them? Is he living proof of that lovely Richard Curtis film About Time where the hero can go back and re-live each day, thus being able to read endlessly?
April 14, 2019
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Future Politics, which overlaps in several ways with my own field of work which looks at the future of work and how government operates. It is one of those books where I often found myself reading a few paragraphs or pages then having to put it down for a few minutes to think about the implications of the analysis. And I learned a fair few things about the history of political thought in the process, which can’t be a bad thing.
The approach is very much step by step, building a thorough and systematic base on which to frame not only the author’s conclusions but future debates. So I think the attempt is a ambitious one. I’m sure it is a book which will be recommended on university courses, and will be much cited.
For me it was a five star read until the last section – the conclusions about where all the analysis takes us. I found it a little on the thin side – setting out coherent principles but stopping short of what these principles would mean in practical terms. Like how exactly a government would apply the principles in practical policy and regulation. Which things exactly ought to be regulated, and how it would be done, or how a government would monitor abuses, or even hand over certain areas of policy to a more competent AI (etc). Or how to apply the advantages wisely in policy areas such as taxation, crime prevention and law enforcement, healthcare, and so on. Perhaps all these are for a later book?
One other thing I noticed is that a large number of the instances referred to where AI and digital systems have got things wrong recently were in the areas of identity politics and (perceptions of) equality and diversity. Most of them (such as having top rankings on searches for offensive or discriminatory questions) are easily resolved once spotted.
However, underlying those critiques of AI learning discriminatory behaviours is a significant issue – if we do calibrate how the algorithms work in order to outlaw or somehow hide how large numbers of people think, we are promoting an outlook where we want the AI to be morally better than ourselves and be, in effect, an automated censor. I think that would be very interesting territory to explore further, in particular how we reconcile that with the democratic, consent and transparency principles the author sets out.
So, overall extremely good and important book, but I wanted it to go further into the realm of practical politics, not only the theoretical.
The approach is very much step by step, building a thorough and systematic base on which to frame not only the author’s conclusions but future debates. So I think the attempt is a ambitious one. I’m sure it is a book which will be recommended on university courses, and will be much cited.
For me it was a five star read until the last section – the conclusions about where all the analysis takes us. I found it a little on the thin side – setting out coherent principles but stopping short of what these principles would mean in practical terms. Like how exactly a government would apply the principles in practical policy and regulation. Which things exactly ought to be regulated, and how it would be done, or how a government would monitor abuses, or even hand over certain areas of policy to a more competent AI (etc). Or how to apply the advantages wisely in policy areas such as taxation, crime prevention and law enforcement, healthcare, and so on. Perhaps all these are for a later book?
One other thing I noticed is that a large number of the instances referred to where AI and digital systems have got things wrong recently were in the areas of identity politics and (perceptions of) equality and diversity. Most of them (such as having top rankings on searches for offensive or discriminatory questions) are easily resolved once spotted.
However, underlying those critiques of AI learning discriminatory behaviours is a significant issue – if we do calibrate how the algorithms work in order to outlaw or somehow hide how large numbers of people think, we are promoting an outlook where we want the AI to be morally better than ourselves and be, in effect, an automated censor. I think that would be very interesting territory to explore further, in particular how we reconcile that with the democratic, consent and transparency principles the author sets out.
So, overall extremely good and important book, but I wanted it to go further into the realm of practical politics, not only the theoretical.
December 7, 2020
Citind aceasta carte, mi se pare ca autorul a vrut mai degraba sa filozofeze pe tema unui viitor mai mult stiintific orientat decat fantastic, pentru ca se bazeaza pe idei si servicii care sunt deja in forma de proiect, daca nu cumva chiar puse in aplicare. Altfel spus, autorul dezbate implicarile unui viitor tehnologizat asupra vietii personale, dar si a vietilor noastre publice, ca si cetateni ai unui stat. Ideile descrise sunt deja stiute as spune eu... chiar si Susskind admite ca prezentul incepe sa semene din ce in ce mai mult cu serialul Black Mirror, dar daca vreti sa vedeti ceva mai usor, cu tenta comedica, si care pare sa imprumute toate tehnologiile descrise in aceasta carte, recomand serialul Upload. Destul cu publicitatea. Ceea ce cred ca a incercat defapt Susskind sa faca, este sa detalieze implicarile tehnologiilor pe care noi le folosim si sa ne puna pe ganduri la cum ne influenteaza vietile si cum le vor influenta vietile copiilor nostrii. Pentru noi as zice ca e putin cam tarziu... nu vom reusi noi sa schimbam prea mult lumea, oricat de vigilenti am fii. Suna a teoria conspiratiei dar este tristul adevar, faptul ca vietile noastre sunt controlate/influentate de catre marile corporatii. Si pe masura ce acestea isi inghit competitorii (gen cum fac Disney sau Amazon), cu totii vom fi supusi unei game din ce in ce mai mici de alternative. Cartea nu propune solutii, defapt tot ce face este sa ne arate un viitor destul de ingrijorator si apoi sa ne tot repete cat de ingrijorator este, folosindu-se de aceleasi exemple obosite. Nici nu pot sa spun ca analizeaza toate implicatiile acestor dezvoltari, si desi chiar spune ca nici nu pretinde a poate reusi acest lucru, eu o sa fiu rautacioasa si o sa spun ca in cate pagini are cartea, ar fi putut lejer sa dezbata mai mult subiectele atinse daca nu se repeta de atatea ori. Dar, o solutie am gasit-o eu. Schimbarile se petrec de-a lungul generatiilor iar ceea ce noi putem face este sa ii educam pe cei mici pentru a trai altfeld decat am facut-o noi, pentru a lupta pentru drepturile si libertatea ce li se cuvin, sperand ca si ei vor da stacheta mai departe si numarul celor care se vor implica activ in viata politica va creste exponential.
January 6, 2022
wise restraints make men free."
we are free for we are bound by certain rules and laws. powerful statement to ponder !!
the author briefly summarises the emergence of socio-political systems in society and traces its development from ancient athens greece, medicial europe and present day.
the stability of society and governments the author claims pivots on laws advocated that support common good (thus causing less overall harm).
But what of the laws that dictate the digital landscape.
liberty, freedom, and democracy. what these terms shall mean when laws are conceptualised, given shape, made and executed digitally by the machine assisted by technologies like blockchain, IOT and the internet "obviously with human consent". but without the need for the executive (judge, police etc)
laws made by trend analysis, for humans but by machine. Thats where the power of digital corporations come in to redefine some of the basics of sociology and perhaps political discourse in future.
would'nt a world be a better place if technology doesnt let one break law and commit a crime, forget about one being penalised about breaking a law.
may be this is utopian but the hypothesis presents a challenge definetely to the efficiency of democratic systems and governance.
we are free for we are bound by certain rules and laws. powerful statement to ponder !!
the author briefly summarises the emergence of socio-political systems in society and traces its development from ancient athens greece, medicial europe and present day.
the stability of society and governments the author claims pivots on laws advocated that support common good (thus causing less overall harm).
But what of the laws that dictate the digital landscape.
liberty, freedom, and democracy. what these terms shall mean when laws are conceptualised, given shape, made and executed digitally by the machine assisted by technologies like blockchain, IOT and the internet "obviously with human consent". but without the need for the executive (judge, police etc)
laws made by trend analysis, for humans but by machine. Thats where the power of digital corporations come in to redefine some of the basics of sociology and perhaps political discourse in future.
would'nt a world be a better place if technology doesnt let one break law and commit a crime, forget about one being penalised about breaking a law.
may be this is utopian but the hypothesis presents a challenge definetely to the efficiency of democratic systems and governance.
May 10, 2021
Viitorul ne urmărește cu obstinație. Este tot timpul în aşteptare, abia ascuns vederii, pândind de după colţ sau după zarea următoare. Nu ştim niciodată ce formă va lua. Adesea, ne surprinde complet nepregătiţi. Astăzi, mulţi avem impresia că se apropie o perioadă de mari frământări. Lumea pare să se schimbe mai repede decât putem noi să înţelegem. Ne străduim adesea să elucidăm evenimente politice care, cu numai câţiva ani în urmă, ar fi fost de neînchipuit. Uneori, nu avem nici măcar cuvintele potrivite spre a le descrie. În sinea noastră ştim însă că acesta nu este decât începutul. Premisa de la care porneşte cartea de faţă este aceea că progresele neîncetate realizate în ştiinţă şi tehnologie urmează să schimbe radical felul în care conviețuim, având consecinţe profunde şi, totodată, înspăimântătoare asupra politicii. Nu suntem încă pregătiţi – din punct de vedere intelectual, filosofic sau moral – pentru lumea pe care o creăm. În următoarele decenii, vechile moduri de gândire, care ne‑au fost de mare folos sute sau chiar mii de ani, vor fi puse sub semnul întrebării.
November 21, 2022
Stopping part way through. I dont like stopping books but I'm also very careful with my time when it comes to reading given the sheer vastness of the market.
Future Politics opens up a great discussion, theorising the ways in which "politics" - not just governmental but societal - will become an inherently digital concept. As technologies advance, digital laws, robotics and algorithms will define and enforce how we live our lives. Slightly disconcerting reading in parts but interesting and worthwhile reading nonetheless.
My main gripe with the book, however, is that a point is made... and then is repeated several times throughout such that it feels like a case of deja vu. That discovery of something new and enticing as we turn each page is just a little lost. I certainly learnt new elements but just felt as if, i was being pulled back to previous points a little too much. It's important to hammer home the most fundamental topics within a piece of theory but with the subject matter, I fear it prioritises ensuring surface level clarity over depth of understanding.
Future Politics opens up a great discussion, theorising the ways in which "politics" - not just governmental but societal - will become an inherently digital concept. As technologies advance, digital laws, robotics and algorithms will define and enforce how we live our lives. Slightly disconcerting reading in parts but interesting and worthwhile reading nonetheless.
My main gripe with the book, however, is that a point is made... and then is repeated several times throughout such that it feels like a case of deja vu. That discovery of something new and enticing as we turn each page is just a little lost. I certainly learnt new elements but just felt as if, i was being pulled back to previous points a little too much. It's important to hammer home the most fundamental topics within a piece of theory but with the subject matter, I fear it prioritises ensuring surface level clarity over depth of understanding.
May 14, 2020
Câteva pagini bune puteau fi tăiate dacă autorul nu enunța din cinci în cinci pagini “în capitolul următor voi vorbi despre...”, “urmează să vedem în capitolul...”, “dar mai multe detalii peste trei capitole...”, “vom ajunge și acolo, dar în capitolul...”. Aproape că îți vine să dai direct la ultima pagină să vezi drequ finalitatea anticipării ăsteia!
Miros un gen de cărți care se înmulțesc tot mai mult și regurgitează ceea ce au înghițit celelalte deja. Pe tron stă Homo Deus a lui Yuval. Pe alocuri, îți vine să-l întrebi pe autor “îmi citezi din Homo Deus sau ce facem?”
Umor slab acolo unde acesta încearcă să existe, puțin amor propriu al autorului ițit pe ici, pe colo. Exemplele folosite în carte sunt slabe și parcă tot aceleași de pretutindeni.
Cartea se vrea una de specialitate.
Eșuează lamentabil.
Miros un gen de cărți care se înmulțesc tot mai mult și regurgitează ceea ce au înghițit celelalte deja. Pe tron stă Homo Deus a lui Yuval. Pe alocuri, îți vine să-l întrebi pe autor “îmi citezi din Homo Deus sau ce facem?”
Umor slab acolo unde acesta încearcă să existe, puțin amor propriu al autorului ițit pe ici, pe colo. Exemplele folosite în carte sunt slabe și parcă tot aceleași de pretutindeni.
Cartea se vrea una de specialitate.
Eșuează lamentabil.
March 11, 2019
A wonderful exploration of how politics is being shaped by tech - and where it could lead our democracy. This book is the latest to challenge the idea that our representative democracy could be time limited by tech and as well as outlining some fairly dystopian scenarios, Jamie Susskind offers some new models of government shaped by new technology which might be more effective than democracy.
This is also a great book for specific concerns about how social media firms have been involved in attempts to hack our democracy and this is covered at great length.
Overall this is an intelligently written but clear and direct work that anyone working in tech, government, politics or journalism would probably find highly compelling.
This is also a great book for specific concerns about how social media firms have been involved in attempts to hack our democracy and this is covered at great length.
Overall this is an intelligently written but clear and direct work that anyone working in tech, government, politics or journalism would probably find highly compelling.
August 16, 2020
This book is a must read for this technological age. The book bring many thought-provoking, and huanting ideas of how the future of technology and society will look like, especially in a democracy. Susskind compels the readers with different paths of society if no constraints are taken and how it will look like if actions are taken. Susskind's writing is clear and easy to follow. He sets all the relevant knowledge and history needed to see the future of technology in the perspective of political science. As a reader with no prior knowledge in the study of political science, this was a pretty easy read, however the ideas are hard to imagine but well worth considering as it pertains the future of democracy.
September 30, 2021
Outstanding treatise on how we all (technologists and political theorists alike) must reckon with how technology will change society. What really resonated with me is how he repeatedly called on technologists to think about societal implications of their advances. Very impressive how he described everything from the future of technology to political theory to how technology will impact power, liberty, democracy, and justice.
This is the best (and truly only) book I’ve read on this topic, and it was everything I hoped for. A great reference for its sourcing alone, and that I had read several of the more salient ones was very exciting. This book has a permanent place on my bookshelf, and perhaps it should even be on my desk at work.
This is the best (and truly only) book I’ve read on this topic, and it was everything I hoped for. A great reference for its sourcing alone, and that I had read several of the more salient ones was very exciting. This book has a permanent place on my bookshelf, and perhaps it should even be on my desk at work.
March 29, 2019
Good, solid laying out of the compelling argument for tackling 'data as coal', tech giant dominance and hideous manipulation of media and scrutiny. Enjoyable look back too at the history of liberal democracy. Can't really fault it.
Where I struggled: there's possibly a little too much signposting and diligent-but-dull referencing of the text itself (all that 'As we saw in Chapter 3'; 'More on the Divine Right in Chapter 7, where we'll be looking at 'Systems'). Perhaps that's an OUP thing - but I feel this could have been a much relaxed, conversational book. Small point. Otherwise, fine work. Hopefully it'll do well.
Where I struggled: there's possibly a little too much signposting and diligent-but-dull referencing of the text itself (all that 'As we saw in Chapter 3'; 'More on the Divine Right in Chapter 7, where we'll be looking at 'Systems'). Perhaps that's an OUP thing - but I feel this could have been a much relaxed, conversational book. Small point. Otherwise, fine work. Hopefully it'll do well.
December 31, 2020
Iegādājos grāmatu ar autora autogrāfu tepat Rīgā, Digital Freedom Festival!
Un šis bija feins ceļojums, kas palīdz izprast daudzus no iespējamajiem scenārijiem, attīstoties tehnoloģijām un atstājot arvien lielāku ietekmi uz cilvēku dzīvēm un politiku.
Ļoti patīkams bija aspekts, ka grāmata apskatīja tik daudz scenāriju un ceļu, pie tam neviens netika uzspiests kā pareizais, tā lika daudz domāt par tehnoloģijām un ētiskumu, par milzu pretrunīgām problēmām, ko nāksies risināt turpmākajā gadsimtā, kas iekļauj cilvēku un kapitāla brīvību, bezdarbu, īpašumtiesības un daudz cita.
Iesaku tiem, kam patīk tehnoloģijas un to ietekme uz sabiedrību.
Un šis bija feins ceļojums, kas palīdz izprast daudzus no iespējamajiem scenārijiem, attīstoties tehnoloģijām un atstājot arvien lielāku ietekmi uz cilvēku dzīvēm un politiku.
Ļoti patīkams bija aspekts, ka grāmata apskatīja tik daudz scenāriju un ceļu, pie tam neviens netika uzspiests kā pareizais, tā lika daudz domāt par tehnoloģijām un ētiskumu, par milzu pretrunīgām problēmām, ko nāksies risināt turpmākajā gadsimtā, kas iekļauj cilvēku un kapitāla brīvību, bezdarbu, īpašumtiesības un daudz cita.
Iesaku tiem, kam patīk tehnoloģijas un to ietekme uz sabiedrību.
April 4, 2021
Intre 3 si 4, mai aproape de 3. Cartea incepe bine, in forta, elegant, ideile sunt faine, exemplele bine alese, argumentatia curge logic si firesc, pe alocuri chiar captivant. Mi-am si notat/subliniat o groaza de lucruri din ea. In ultima treime, incepe sa derapeze, sa se repete, sa reia ideile, ca un avocat pledant la bara, indragostit de propria voce si de linia argumentatiei.
Cartea are meritul de a fi reusit sa puna impreuna niste problematici pe care nimeni nu le-a rostit atat de clar: care sunt implicatiile politice, sociale si umane ale erei digitale in miezul careia avansam cu viteza luminii?
Cartea are meritul de a fi reusit sa puna impreuna niste problematici pe care nimeni nu le-a rostit atat de clar: care sunt implicatiile politice, sociale si umane ale erei digitale in miezul careia avansam cu viteza luminii?
July 22, 2023
Susskind is obviously very bright and well read. He analysises the technology world and where it is going well. I also found his suggestions for managing the powers being unleashed by AI very credible. Interestingly, just today I read that the US has agreed with seven principle AI developers that they will include a 'watermark' in AI produced products so that they can be seen to be AI generated, a policy which Susskind advocates.
My low score is because I found the book over long and with perhaps too many names, references and too much detail for a layman.
My low score is because I found the book over long and with perhaps too many names, references and too much detail for a layman.
April 7, 2019
Jamie Susskind is an author, speaker and barrister and in this accessible, thought-provoking and timely book (that has comprehensive footnotes) he sets out the threats and benefits that rapidly advancing technology bring to the political arena and what it means for democracy and society but while the book is strong on explaining the political theory and technology and the issues and options they throw up, it’s light on solutions.
March 18, 2020
With well structured content and accessible language, this book offers a good insight into the challenges and opportunities of a digital society. It debates on subjects very closely ralated to our political and social ecosystem and offers a great perspective on how to approach friction points in this ecosystem. For some reason it has some loose and somewhat shallow arguments here and there which could have used a bit more detailing. Maybe in a sequel ;)
April 18, 2020
Visionary and interesting book. The tone is kept at an objective level as much as possible, with a little optimistic undertone, which is very welcome in my opinion. Author created a healthy habit of presenting both sides of each coin, in every subject touched by the book. I recommend it for anyone who might look at the future and politics wiht curious, hopeful or even fearful eyes. It helps shedding some light over those ideas that might scare us now.
December 31, 2020
Great and timely (as in we are already behind the trend, so read now) read on how the changes in digital technology, AI and social networks have far-reaching implications for our democracies, political systems and justice in society. Current political theory and legal concepts don’t quite have the span to explain and regulate these changes, so it’s a good book to start the thinking process on the issue.
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