Ideas / Past Present Future: a listening list
Thinking About Thinking Machines: Isaac Asimov's 'Franchise'
David Runciman with Shannon Vallor
A supercomputer chooses one voter to stand in for a nation. Democracy becomes extremely efficient and correspondingly strange.
Runciman and Vallor use Asimov’s short story to examine the point at which better prediction begins to displace collective judgment. The machine does not abolish democracy. It optimizes democracy until almost nobody needs to do it.