“Future Politics” by Jamie Susskind book is a sort of speculative sci-fi bound together by political theory, trying to avert disaster by showing us both the good and bad possibilities.
Susskind’s book contains challenges that need us to understand the extent to which new technologies will shape the way society works and uses the insights of political philosophy to show how technologies are already influencing issues of power, liberty, democracy, and social justice.
The book asks penetrating questions about where power will lie in the future with governments, transnational tech giants, inpiduals, or with artificial intelligence itself.
Susskind argues that rapid and relentless innovation in a range of technologies from artificial intelligence to virtual reality will transform the way we live together.
How will digital technology transform politics and society?
Calling for a fundamental change in the way we think about politics, he describes a world in which certain technologies and platforms, and those who control them, come to hold great power over us. Some will gather data about our lives, causing us to avoid conduct perceived as shameful, sinful, or wrong.
Others will filter our perception of the world, choosing what we know, shaping what we think, affecting how we feel, and guiding how we act. Still others will force us to behave certain ways, like self-driving cars that refuse to drive over the speed limit.
The above neatly sums up why this book isn’t aimed purely at scientists on one hand and political theorists on the other by evoking the possibly apocryphal story of an encounter between Michael Faraday and the Victorian statesman William Gladstone who failed to understand Faraday’s explanation of his groundbreaking work on electricity.
‘Future Politics’ challenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, what it means for a political system to be just or democratic, and proposes ways in which we must regain control. This is no less than a call for a fundamental change in the way we think about politics.
Future Politics
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?
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