Book by Tom Baldwin: We all know something has gone wrong: people hate politics, loathe the media and are now scared of each other too. Journalist and one-time senior political advisor Tom Baldwin tells the riveting–often terrifying–story of how a tidal wave of information overwhelmed democracy’s sandcastle defenses against extremism and falsehood. Ctrl Alt Delete exposes the struggle for control between a rapacious 24-hour media and terrified politicians that has loosened those leaders’ grip on truth as the internet rips the ground out from under them. It explains how dependency on data, algorithms and digital technology brought about the... (More >)
Direct Democracy and Political Engagement of the Marginalized
Dissertation by Jeong Hyun Kim: “…examines direct democracy’s implications for political equality by focusing on how it influences and modifies political attitudes and behaviors of marginalized groups. Using cases and data from Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States, I provide a comprehensive, global examination of how direct democratic institutions affect political participation, especially of political minority or marginalized groups. In the first paper, I examine whether the practice of direct democracy supports women’s political participation. I theorize that the use of direct democracy enhances women’s sense of political efficacy, thereby promoting their participation in the political process. I test... (More >)
Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
Book by Jamie Susskind: “Future Politics confronts one of the most important questions of our time: how will digital technology transform politics and society? The great political debate of the last century was about how much of our collective life should be determined by the state and what should be left to the market and civil society. In the future, the question will be how far our lives should be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems — and on what terms? Jamie Susskind argues that rapid and relentless innovation in a range of technologies — from artificial intelligence... (More >)
Mission Failure
Matthew Sawh at Stanford Social Innovation Review: “Exposing the problems of policy schools can ignite new ways to realize the mission of educating public servants in the 21st century…. Public policy schools were founded with the aim to educate public servants with academic insights that could be applied to government administration. And while these programs have adapted the tools and vocabularies of the Reagan Revolution, such as the use of privatization and the rhetoric of competition, they have not come to terms with his philosophical legacy that describes our contemporary political culture. To do so, public policy schools need... (More >)
Digital Deceit II: A Policy Agenda to Fight Disinformation on the Internet
Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott at New America: “The crisis for democracy posed by digital disinformation demands a new social contract for the internet rooted in transparency, privacy and competition. This is the conclusion we have reached through careful study of the problem of digital disinformation and reflection on potential solutions. …Digital media platforms did not cause the fractured and irrational politics that plague modern societies. But the economic logic of digital markets too often serves to compound social division by feeding pre-existing biases, affirming false beliefs, and fragmenting media audiences. The companies that control this market are among... (More >)
How Insurance Companies Used Bad Science to Discriminate
Jessie Wright-Mendoza at JStor: “After the Civil War, the United States searched for ways to redefine itself. But by the 1880’s, the hopes of Reconstruction had dimmed. Across the United States there was instead a push to formalize and legalize discrimination against African-Americans. The effort to marginalize the first generation of free black Americans infiltrated nearly every aspect of daily life, including the cost of insurance. Initially, African-Americans could purchase life insurance policies on equal footing with whites. That all changed in 1881. In March of that year Prudential, one of the country’s largest insurers, announced that policies held... (More >)
The Cost-Benefit Revolution
Book by Cass Sunstein: “Why policies should be based on careful consideration of their costs and benefits rather than on intuition, popular opinion, interest groups, and anecdotes. Opinions on government policies vary widely. Some people feel passionately about the child obesity epidemic and support government regulation of sugary drinks. Others argue that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they like. Some people are alarmed about climate change and favor aggressive government intervention. Others don’t feel the need for any sort of climate regulation. In The Cost-Benefit Revolution, Cass Sunstein argues our major disagreements really involve facts,... (More >)
Our shared reality is fraying
Arie Kruglanski at The Conversation: “The concept of truth is under assault, but our troubles with truth aren’t exactly new. What’s different is that in the past, debates about the status of truth primarily took place in intellectual cafes and academic symposia among philosophers. These days, uncertainty about what to believe is endemic – a pervasive feature of everyday life for everyday people. “Truth isn’t truth” – Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, famously said in August. His statement wasn’t as paradoxical as it might have appeared. It means that our beliefs, what we hold as true, are ultimately... (More >)
The Promise and Peril of the Digital Knowledge Loop
Excerpt of Albert Wenger’s draft book World After Capital: “The zero marginal cost and universality of digital technologies are already impacting the three phases of learning, creating and sharing, giving rise to a Digital Knowledge Loop. This Digital Knowledge Loop holds both amazing promise and great peril, as can be seen in the example of YouTube. YouTube has experienced astounding growth since its release in beta form in 2005. People around the world now upload over 100 hours of video content to YouTube every minute. It is difficult to grasp just how much content that is. If you were... (More >)
Attempting the Impossible: A Thoughtful Meditation on Technology
Book review by Akash Kapur of A Life in Code By David Auerbach in the New York Times: “What began as a vague apprehension — unease over the amount of time we spend on our devices, a sense that our children are growing up distracted — has, since the presidential election of 2016, transformed into something like outright panic. Pundits and politicians debate the perils of social media; technology is vilified as an instigator of our social ills, rather than a symptom. Something about our digital life seems to inspire extremes: all that early enthusiasm, the utopian fervor over... (More >)