How the Internet is Killing Democracy

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Tech has radically changed the way we live our lives – but have we engaged actively enough with its implications? The recent Facebook revelations have shown just how high the stakes are, and how much we have unwittingly surrendered.

We have given over much of our lives to shadowy powers behind a wall of code, all manipulated by a handful of Silicon Valley utopians, ad men, and venture capitalists. And, in light of recent data breach scandals around companies such as Cambridge Analytica, what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information and artificial intelligence?

Author and director of CASM at Demos, Jamie Bartlett argues that through our unquestioning embrace of big tech, the building blocks of democracy are slowly being removed. The middle class is being eroded, sovereign authority and civil society is weakened, and we citizens are losing our critical faculties – and perhaps even our free will.