The Secret Academic

In our last post, we asked the question whether the 2024 US Presidential election was a free and fair one. Part one of that post concluded that it was likely not free, in light of : (1) the undue influence, undue pressure and/or coercion routinely applied at the psychologically non-rational level to users by social media platforms; (2) the owner of one such platform, also the world’s richest man, fervently supporting one candidate over the other; and (3) the strange incident of the AmericaPAC ‘petition’ aimed at swing state voters only.

What does it mean to hold a free and fair election – that essential, regular feature of democratic political systems – today? It’s a question that all democratic states now need to answer, and to revisit regularly, in light of the current realities of rapid technological and other transformations taking place at scale. It’s also a question worth raising specifically in the context of the 2024 US Presidential election.

The announcement on 21 July 2024 by President Joe Biden to abandon his re-election bid, his endorsement of vice president Kamala Harris, and her official appointment as the Democratic nominee on 5 August, have ended a period of division and turmoil within the Democratic party. Media reports over the last couple of weeks describe a new wellspring of pro-Harris fundraising and other efforts from organisations of young people [...]

In our last post, Preach (Tech) Brother, the concern was expressed that those behind the Techno-Optimist ‘Manifesto’ (or TOM) might use their significant political, economic and social/cultural clout  to push this dubious belief system onto others. Well now there’s a postscript: a subsequent edict [...]

If the Techno-Optimist Manifesto was an undergraduate term paper in the social sciences, it would fail. When it comes to lazy thinking and writing, examples abound: Sweeping statements (‘Technology is the ultimate open society’/ ‘our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization [...]