Techdirt Podcast Episode 39: Technology's Impact On Democracy

from the voice-of-the-people dept

Tue, Aug 25th 2015 12:45pm — Leigh Beadon

From e-voting and online petitions to broad new avenues of communication between politicians and the public, technology is changing democracy, and has the potential to do so even more. This week we're joined by Catherine Bracy, the Technology Field Officer for Obama For America in 2012, to discuss the current and future impact of rapidly changing technology on the democratic process and whether these impacts have been "good" or "bad."

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: catherine bracy, democracy, podcast, politics, technology

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2015 @ 1:43pm

"E-voting" and "online polls" wide open to outright fraud by the State besides "hacking".
You are actually advocating the death of democracy. Anything that can't be verified with a paper trail is perfect for dictators.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mason Wheeler (profile), 25 Aug 2015 @ 1:45pm

"Non-transparent, deterministic things that basically have a huge influence on your life that you have no ability to inspect, that's..."
"...that's absurd."
"...that's like science fiction."

That's like a credit score. The standard FICO credit score is determined by a secret algorithm that they protect via abuse of copyright and trade secret laws, and no matter how much it impacts your life, you have no legal recourse to see what goes on inside the calculation of your credit score.

You have a right to see your credit score estimates by the three major credit bureaus, and they have to pass on to you reports of specific factors that are impacting it, but their reports are not your official credit score, and they're based on attempts to reverse-engineer the FICO algorithm. They can vary quite widely between the three for a number of reasons.

Think about that. It's not just teachers, or convicted criminals. Everyone who's ever needed to take out a loan to buy a house or a car--pretty much everyone, that is, because if you haven't, you're likely still young enough that it's directly affecting you because it directly affects your parents--their lives are immensely influenced by a secret algorithm that they have zero insight into or power over.
"Putting the power back in the hands of citizens, as opposed to just relying on the government. And that actually speaks directly to the concept of democracy, right?"

Wrong. The concept of democracy, particularly American democracy, is "We the People ... do ordain and establish this [government structure]." The concept is that the dichotomy expressed here of "citizens instead of government" does not exist; in democracy, government is "us", not "them".

That concept's been badly corrupted over the last several decades, due largely to Libertarian influence, but it's how the system is supposed to work, and it's no surprise that when the system stops working that way, people by and large perceive that it's simply stopped working.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Gwiz (profile), 25 Aug 2015 @ 2:06pm
  
  Re:
  Everyone who's ever needed to take out a loan to buy a house or a car--pretty much everyone, that is, because if you haven't, you're likely still young enough that it's directly affecting you because it directly affects your parents--their lives are immensely influenced by a secret algorithm that they have zero insight into or power over.
  
  I haven't given a shit about my credit score since about 2001 when I defaulted on some credit card debt because I was unemployed at the time. The only credit I carry now is my house note, which I refinanced in 2005 without any problems. I simply told them I didn't give a crap about credit scores, this is what my property is worth, this is what I have in equity and this is what I still owe, do you want to give me loan or not. They did. Everything else I pay cash for. If I can't afford it, I don't buy it.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2015 @ 2:11pm
  
  Re:
  ...That concept's been badly corrupted over the last several decades, due largely to Libertarian influence...
  
  Socialist influence has been more impacting, and it is those two influences that have been polarizing Congress and the rest of the US.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2015 @ 1:58pm

Anything done online is ripe for fraud, especially "politics".
That's all is to say here, unless you're insane.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2015 @ 10:55pm
  
  Re:
  Anything out_of_the_blue does online is fraud.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Leigh Beadon (profile), 26 Aug 2015 @ 7:17am
  
  Re: Anything done online is ripe for fraud, especially "politics".
  OK, so let's just pretend technology doesn't exist and democracy will never change even slightly.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
anonymy, 25 Aug 2015 @ 2:53pm

hope as masses' opiate
Obama's such a freaking hypocrite. Made all manner of lefty promises during campaign, not 1 of which I believed for 1 minute. (I'm a seasoned lefty and had given up progressive hopes for the Dems years prior. (Their stealing of our meme, "vote your hopes not your fears!" -- twisted into just "Hope (TM)" was most insidious.) Many of us realize that a society run by honest union organizing -- the genuine left -- would in the age of present computer power amount to direct democracy-- eminently possible at this point but absolutely not something the 2 huge, crooked, power-drunk Parties want anything to do with. In any honest way anyway-- lipservice, OH yeah!
.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJV3OB7AAoJEIdzh/n+iqCuezMH/3c99SW2dVA8HAVk1OlzGyNC
yxK0yiozpTJVKN3mNEUlimVwX/AnPh7Pro GS0PHqQ9AFHR6WdwouHoLMwIu7p7aB
7NYADNDGutt9N5JYVceqschScpIrm+CmCGJ+CJqLr8zzLS15CZspn6KqM+P45yb/
bE3xXX 2j2MKwO09GasN5QA+mPZmlA4Caigq8HVcqKv9Fe1q/DFpYZSa6NnpbbNmH
oSHxyLcic2zI0XdyhCMiaVCBqu7066DyUcUdOIYTcZ I0xHm1S18chBKSoPV0sHQg
aBOfuiPF4A1zgJj0SBiUpCin3XGLp1smt1BMlgxzoV+rJwmu0rofUMnV3CVF298=
=4vAG
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
[ link to this | view in chronology ]