A citizen with a view
Reflections on democratic citizenship and technology
Category: long views
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In August 1955, Isaac Asimov published Franchise, a short story in which a computer decides the results of the US elections after interviewing one single citizen. It is the year 2008(!) and Multivac, the electing machine, has chosen Norman, a clerk in a small departement store from Bloomington, Indiana, to be the single, most representative, voter in the forthcoming…
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Adam: Have you watched the news? Eve: Oh! Poor children… Adam: Imagine, all three of them had genetic mutations that would have prevented them from living worthy lives. Eve: Lucky fat guy! Adam: Well, good that the trolley was connected to the Central Unit. Who else would have been able to tell? Eve: Yet, poor…
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Previously published on Verfassungsblog, Debate on China‘s Social Credit Sysrem, 2019 I agree with Wessel Reijers that social scoring systems limit political freedom and instrumentalise citizenship to impose social control. While technologies have always been used for political ends, the latest technologies relying on big data and complex algorithms offer uniquely powerful and highly effective tools to…
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Previously published in R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating Transformations of National Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, 2018 In his thought-provoking kick-off contribution, Liav Orgad (1) enthusiastically embraces the idea of a global digital citizenship that could remedy some of the deficiencies of the present system of territorial national citizenships and, potentially, transform the meaning of democratic citizenship.…
A citizen with a view 