Prophets predict the future at their own risk. That said, Jamie Susskind’s Future Politics was among the most frightening books of 2018. Philosophical and witty, erudite yet casual, the British author explores the consequences of developments occurring faster than the human eye can follow. Self-driving cars may make speeding impossible. “Good!” you say. How about algorithms “allocating social goods and sorting us into hierarchies of status and esteem”? It’s already happened in China. The “wealth” that once flowed to laborers will go instead to the patentholders of labor-saving tech. 3D printers are nifty, but what happens if no one needs factory workers? Our lives are quantified and he who owns the data might own us (virtually). What’s to be done when our perceptions are directed by search engines? Future Politics is a long book. Tellingly, the shortest portion has to do with proposed solutions to the digital hole we’ve dug for ourselves.
