Technology's Impact on Democracy and Ignored Warnings

Democracy v the machine: the birth of the digital age and the warnings that were ignored

Many hoped that the march of technology would usher in an egalitarian utopia – but some foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen? One of the stranger things about this dizzying, headlong moment in time is that it doesn’t have much of a past. Everything is about the future of this, the future of that: the future of work, the future of humanity, the future of the planet. It’s as if everyone is screaming (some ecstatically, most terror-stricken): robots are taki...

By Jill Lepore