Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech [Hardcover]

Politics in the Twentieth Century was dominated by a single question: how much of our collective life should be determined by the state, and what should be left to the market and civil society?

Now the debate is different: to what extent should our lives be directed and controlled by powerful digital systems - and on what terms?

Digital technologies - from artificial intelligence to blockchain, from robotics to virtual reality - are transforming the way we live together. Those who control the most powerful technologies are increasingly able to control the rest of us. As time goes on, these powerful entities - usually big tech firms and the state - will set the limits of our liberty, decreeing what may be done and what is forbidden. Their algorithms will determine vital questions of social justice. In their hands, democracy will flourish or decay.

A landmark work of political theory,Future Politicschallenges readers to rethink what it means to be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and what it means for a political system to be just or democratic. In a time of rapid and relentless changes, it is a book about how we can - and must - regain control.

Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize.

Introduction
Part I. The Digital Lifeworld
1. Increasingly Capable Systems
2. Increasingly Integrated Technology
3. Increasingly Quantified Society
4. Thinking Like a Theorist
Part II. Power
5. Code is Power
6. Force
7. Scrutiny
8. Regulating Perception
9. Public and Private Power
Part III. Liberty & Democracy
10. Freedom and the Supercharged State
11. Freedom and the Tech Firm
12. The Dream of Democracy
13. Democracy in the Future
Part IV. Equality & Social Justice
14. Algorithms of Distribution
15. Algorithms of Recognition
16. Algorithmic Injustice
17. Technological Unlăs