Arts
Where politics and democracy are heading into the future? It is a theme that has run throughout the history of science fiction. Something that already in 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin tried to imagine in his novel “We”, for example, and later developed in different directions by Orwell, Huxley and the likes. The following quote from “We” recalls the tone and the imagery of these reflections about the future of democracy, back in the past. A sort of archeology of the Future. *It goes without saying that this does not resemble the disordered, disorganized elections of the Ancients, when – it seems funny to say it – the result of an election was not known beforehand. Building a government on totally unaccounted – for happenstance, blindly – what could be more senseless? And yet still, it turns out, it took centuries to understand this. * Malka Older condensed a reflection on the topic in her Centenal Cycle, a series of cyberpunk technothrillers beginning with Infomocracy. Her premise is set in a not so distant future ad it portrays a world governed by micro-democracies. Countries have been replaced by districts (called centenals) of 100,000 people, and the entire world turns out to vote once a decade for their local government. The political party elected to the most centenals becomes the Supermajority, setting policy and direction for the world at large. Needless to say, the stakes are high as a new election approaches. In this episode we will start our space-time exploration of today with that premise. How would Europe look like under Infomocracy? Malka Older is a writer, humanitarian worker, and holds a PhD at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations at science po in Paris studying governance and disasters. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali. Her first novel Infomocracy has been published by Tor.com in 2016, starting the so-far trilogy of the centenal cycle, which comprises Null States and her latest State Tectonics. She is one of the nominees for the prestigious Hugo Award for 2019 and she recently published for the New York Times in their series op-eds from the future. Giuseppe Porcaro is the author of DISCO SOUR, a novel about Europe and democracy in the age of algorithms, among the winners of the Altiero Spinelli Prize for Outrech of the European Union in 2018. Giuseppe is interested in how the intersection between technology and politics is moving towards uncharted territories in the future. He also focuses on narrative-building and political representations in the European Union. He works as the head of communications for Bruegel.