I don't know who is more insufferable, American politicians with their pretend solidarity or the Eurocrats who skip all that and just ignore the peasants as they spout platitudes.
From deep in the link-vault, Social Europe, April 14, 2015:
It is quite amazing that the European Commission has never really addressed the question of European democracy. Neither a White Paper nor a Green Paper has been issued to reflect upon the concept of supranational democracy that has been under discussion since the very foundations of the European Community/Union. The issue of a democratic deficit pops up regularly but is never worked on consistently. The same observation is true for the European Parliament (EP) which seems to be much more interested in the matter of its twin location (Strasbourg/Brussels) than in the question how to push for more European democracy.
In the end, the crisis has swept away the discussions on European democracy like a hurricane. “The cost of non-Europe” may have been calculated but nobody has yet estimated the cost of non-democracy that is already helping to undermine public support for European integration.
Pressure to increase genuine democracy at a European level regularly emanates from outside the European institutions, through active citizens but also NGOs, intellectuals, philosophers, political scientists and other forces within civil society. So, in recent years, ideas have popped up such as the proposal to choose the Commission president through general elections, to abolish the Commission’s monopoly on the right to legislate by extending it to the EP, to establish a Eurozone Parliament, to adopt a European Constitution etc. At the European elections of 2014, mainstream political parties campaigned under a European ‘top candidate’ (Spitzenkandidat) and the Council had to give way by nominating the winner of the elections as Commission president. The hope that this enhanced personalisation would lead to higher turnout was, however, dashed.
It’s no coincidence that the Commission tends to favour technocratic solutions. The ECB works without any clear democratic control or supervision; the same goes for most of the European (regulatory) agencies. Even inside the legislative process the Commission pushes for technocratic methods involving so called experts chosen by itself, relying on the so called “comitology” process, hundreds of expert groups and advisory committees, most of them not very transparent. Sometimes, even the EP admits that this trend goes too far and tries to keep it under control.
But, for some years now, the Parliament – the so-called heartbeat of European democracy that should always side with those forces pushing for more democracy – has changed sides and voluntarily accepts quite undemocratic procedures: the habit of adopting European legislation in a single reading, in a trialogue between Commission, EP and Council behind closed doors – without taking into account comments from outside the European institutions. This is a clear setback for democracy....
....MUCH MORE, the link goes to the Internet Archive, I couldn't find the article via our stashed URL: https://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/04/understanding-the-european-unions-facade-democracy/ - that link now redirects to the home Page of Social Europe.
And from Scientific American, again hoisted from deep down in the link-vault, February 25, 2017:
Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?
We are in the middle of a technological upheaval that will transform the
way society is organized. We must make the right decisions now
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American’s sister publication, as “Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur.”
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.”
—Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784)The digital revolution is in full swing. How will it change our world? The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. Soon, the things around us, possibly even our clothing, also will be connected with the Internet. It is estimated that in 10 years’ time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money.
Everything will become intelligent; soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities. Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet?
The field of artificial intelligence is, indeed, making breathtaking advances. In particular, it is contributing to the automation of data analysis. Artificial intelligence is no longer programmed line by line, but is now capable of learning, thereby continuously developing itself. Recently, Google's DeepMind algorithm taught itself how to win 49 Atari games. Algorithms can now recognize handwritten language and patterns almost as well as humans and even complete some tasks better than them. They are able to describe the contents of photos and videos. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms. News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. 40% of today's top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade.
It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities in almost all areas—somewhere between 2020 and 2060. Experts are starting to ring alarm bells. Technology visionaries, such as Elon Musk from Tesla Motors, Bill Gates from Microsoft and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, are warning that super-intelligence is a serious danger for humanity, possibly even more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Is this alarmism?
One thing is clear: the way in which we organize the economy and society will change fundamentally. We are experiencing the largest transformation since the end of the Second World War; after the automation of production and the creation of self-driving cars the automation of society is next. With this, society is at a crossroads, which promises great opportunities, but also considerable risks. If we take the wrong decisions it could threaten our greatest historical achievements.
In the 1940s, the American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) invented cybernetics. According to him, the behavior of systems could be controlled by the means of suitable feedbacks. Very soon, some researchers imagined controlling the economy and society according to this basic principle, but the necessary technology was not available at that time.
Today, Singapore is seen as a perfect example of a data-controlled society. What started as a program to protect its citizens from terrorism has ended up influencing economic and immigration policy, the property market and school curricula. China is taking a similar route. Recently, Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, invited the military to take part in the China Brain Project. It involves running so-called deep learning algorithms over the search engine data collected about its users. Beyond this, a kind of social control is also planned. According to recent reports, every Chinese citizen will receive a so-called ”Citizen Score”, which will determine under what conditions they may get loans, jobs, or travel visa to other countries. This kind of individual monitoring would include people’s Internet surfing and the behavior of their social contacts (see ”Spotlight on China”).
With consumers facing increasingly frequent credit checks and some online shops experimenting with personalized prices, we are on a similar path in the West. It is also increasingly clear that we are all in the focus of institutional surveillance. This was revealed in 2015 when details of the British secret service's "Karma Police" program became public, showing the comprehensive screening of everyone's Internet use. Is Big Brother now becoming a reality? Programmed society, programmed citizens
Everything started quite harmlessly. Search engines and recommendation platforms began to offer us personalised suggestions for products and services. This information is based on personal and meta-data that has been gathered from previous searches, purchases and mobility behaviour, as well as social interactions. While officially, the identity of the user is protected, it can, in practice, be inferred quite easily. Today, algorithms know pretty well what we do, what we think and how we feel—possibly even better than our friends and family or even ourselves. Often the recommendations we are offered fit so well that the resulting decisions feel as if they were our own, even though they are actually not our decisions. In fact, we are being remotely controlled ever more successfully in this manner. The more is known about us, the less likely our choices are to be free and not predetermined by others.
But it won't stop there. Some software platforms are moving towards “persuasive computing.” In the future, using sophisticated manipulation technologies, these platforms will be able to steer us through entire courses of action, be it for the execution of complex work processes or to generate free content for Internet platforms, from which corporations earn billions. The trend goes from programming computers to programming people.
These technologies are also becoming increasingly popular in the world of politics. Under the label of “nudging,” and on massive scale, governments are trying to steer citizens towards healthier or more environmentally friendly behaviour by means of a "nudge"—a modern form of paternalism. The new, caring government is not only interested in what we do, but also wants to make sure that we do the things that it considers to be right. The magic phrase is "big nudging", which is the combination of big data with nudging. To many, this appears to be a sort of digital scepter that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes. Could this overcome vested interests and optimize the course of the world? If so, then citizens could be governed by a data-empowered “wise king”, who would be able to produce desired economic and social outcomes almost as if with a digital magic wand.
Pre-programmed catastrophes
But one look at the relevant scientific literature shows that attempts to control opinions, in the sense of their "optimization", are doomed to fail because of the complexity of the problem. The dynamics of the formation of opinions are full of surprises. Nobody knows how the digital magic wand, that is to say the manipulative nudging technique, should best be used. What would have been the right or wrong measure often is apparent only afterwards. During the German swine flu epidemic in 2009, for example, everybody was encouraged to go for vaccination. However, we now know that a certain percentage of those who received the immunization were affected by an unusual disease, narcolepsy. Fortunately, there were not more people who chose to get vaccinated!Another example is the recent attempt of health insurance providers to encourage increased exercise by handing out smart fitness bracelets, with the aim of reducing the amount of cardiovascular disease in the population; but in the end, this might result in more hip operations. In a complex system, such as society, an improvement in one area almost inevitably leads to deterioration in another. Thus, large-scale interventions can sometimes prove to be massive mistakes.
Regardless of this, criminals, terrorists and extremists will try and manage to take control of the digital magic wand sooner or later—perhaps even without us noticing. Almost all companies and institutions have already been hacked, even the Pentagon, the White House, and the NSA.
A further problem arises when adequate transparency and democratic control are lacking: the erosion of the system from the inside. Search algorithms and recommendation systems can be influenced. Companies can bid on certain combinations of words to gain more favourable results. Governments are probably able to influence the outcomes too. During elections, they might nudge undecided voters towards supporting them—a manipulation that would be hard to detect. Therefore, whoever controls this technology can win elections—by nudging themselves to power....
....MUCH MORE
Probably related, April 22:"The digital euro could usher in total state control"
Oh man, can you imagine if Stalin or the Stasi had computers?*
As the kids say "Real socialism feudalism totalitarianism has never actually been tried"...
