{"id":139821,"date":"2022-05-25T20:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/digital-technology-demands-a-new-political-philosophy"},"modified":"2022-05-25T20:03:00","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T01:03:00","slug":"digital-technology-demands-a-new-political-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/digital-technology-demands-a-new-political-philosophy","title":{"rendered":"Digital Technology Demands A New Political Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/digital-technology-demands-a-new-political-philosophy3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Men like Zuckerberg and Musk are the subject of fascination. Their character, their genius, their flaws \u2014 all are treated to feverish scrutiny. Since Musk\u2019s bid for Twitter, there has been a predictable flurry of speculation: does he know what he\u2019s doing? Is he a troll or a revolutionary? Will he improve conditions of free speech? What, if anything, will he do about online harassment and extremism?<\/p>\n<p>Though valuable and interesting, it is possible that these kinds of questions obscure the deeper issue, or at least the longer-term one. At root, the big question for the future of powerful technologies is this: whether they are ultimately <em>economic<\/em> entities which should be governed according to <em>market<\/em> principles, or whether they are in fact <em>political<\/em> in nature, and so should be governed by <em>democratic<\/em> norms and principles. In the long run, the answer we provide to this question will significantly affect the course of democracy around the world \u2014 more, in any event, than whether Musk himself understands the concept of \u201cfree speech absolutism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many other advanced democracies are tacking toward the political\/democratic option. The UK is considering a landmark <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/blog\/techtank\/2022\/05\/19\/what-u-s-policymakers-can-learn-from-the-u-k-s-online-safety-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener noreferrer\">Online Safety Bill<\/a>, which will place strict duties on social media platforms. Off the back of the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU is readying a swathe of new measures \u2014 an Artificial Intelligence Act, a Digital Services Act, a Digital Markets Act \u2014 all of which will curb the power of tech firms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Men like Zuckerberg and Musk are the subject of fascination. Their character, their genius, their flaws \u2014 all are treated to feverish scrutiny. Since Musk\u2019s bid for Twitter, there has been a predictable flurry of speculation: does he know what he\u2019s doing? Is he a troll or a revolutionary? Will he improve conditions of free [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}