“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus (c.535-475 BCE) Greek philosopher

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

You hear the term “competitive authoritarianism” all the time these days. It was first introduced in the Journal of Democracy by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in 2002 to describe a type of political regime that is neither democratic nor fully authoritarian.  “In competitive authoritarian regimes,” write Levitsky and Way, “formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority. Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.” Unfortunately, this describes a growing range of countries across the globe. Read Levitsky and Way’s seminal essay and their more recent update, along with other key insights on hybrid regimes. Free for a limited time.

Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism In recent years, new types of nondemocratic government have come to the fore, notably competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes, though not democratic, feature arenas of contestation in which opposition forces can challenge, and even oust, authoritarian incumbents. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way   The New Competitive Authoritarianism In recent years competitive authoritarianism has emerged in some countries with relatively strong democratic traditions and institutions. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way The Surprising Instability of Competitive Authoritarianism Most competitive authoritarian regimes have proven strikingly unstable over recent decades. Quasi-democratic institutions, rather than serving authoritarians as useful instruments of manipulation, have frequently contributed to the breakdown of these systems. Christopher Carothers   Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes Many countries have adopted the form of democracy with little of its substance. This makes the task of classifying regimes more difficult, but also more important. Larry Diamond When Does Competitive Authoritarianism Take Root? It is not easy to build a stable hybrid regime. Elected autocrats may try, but comparing Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela shows how difficult it is to succeed. Ximena Velasco Guachalla, Calla Hummel, Sam Handlin, and Amy Erica Smith

The Journal of Democracy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Members of the press and members of Congress who wish to receive electronic access should email our managing editor. For more information, please visit our website or send us an email. Subscribe now for full access to the Journal of Democracy archives.

By Leonard David published yesterday (Space.com)

“It’s not too soon to begin thinking about this.”

After “re-booting” the moon and establishing a base there, followed by dispatching expeditionary crews to Mars, where should humanity go?

Next month, a first-of-its-kind gathering will blueprint an eventual crewed trek to tantalizing Titan, the largest of Saturn‘s many moons. That inaugural “Humans to Titan Summit” will make the case for an astronaut outing to that far-off moon, detailing the science goals and concepts of human missions to Titan as well as necessary forerunner robotic efforts.

And there is already a robotic Titan mission on the books — NASA’s nuclear-powered Dragonfly octocopter mission, which is targeted to launch in 2028. Could it help fuel a human leap?You may like

• Rainfall, rivers and seas: How Earth can prepare us to explore Saturn’s moon Titan
• NASA begins building nuclear-powered Dragonfly drone for 2028 launch to Saturn moon Titan
• ‘Tall waves moving in slow motion’: Here’s how oily oceans on Saturn’s giant moon Titan may behave

Foundational talks

“It’s not too soon to begin thinking about this,” said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. She is also president of the advocacy group Explore Titan and co-author of “Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets” (Pantheon Books, 2016).

“The idea of the summit is to bring together people from different communities — engineers, scientists, industry, academia, robotic and human spaceflight experts,” Hendrix told Space.com. “We’re having foundational talks about what precursor missions do we need in order to get us on the road to Titan, eventually with humans.”

Hendrix noted that, after Apollo‘s last human foray to the moon in 1972, there was a gap of decades, a lull in launching astronauts beyond Earth orbit — a pause just filled by NASA’s recent Artemis 2 mission, which sent four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth.

“Now we are, hopefully, back on track [with] humans going to the moon, with NASA talking about Mars as the next human destination,” said Hendrix. “I think having a concept in our mind after Mars can guide our thinking, give us a path and keep us motivated for the future.”

Visits, past and future

The Saturn moon has had visitors already. On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency‘s robotic Huygens probe — part of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn — touched down on Titan.

Making a 2.5-hour descent through Titan’s atmosphere, the Huygens probe provided a stream of data for 72 minutes once on the moon’s surface. It set the still-standing record as the most distant landing from Earth.

“Huygens showed us many things,” Hendrix said. She cited the dynamics of Titan’s atmosphere, the look of its surface — which features water-ice “rocks,” dry river beds, lakes and dunes — as well as the overall haziness at the landing locale.What to read next

• Did a titanic moon crash create Saturn’s iconic rings?
• Artemis 3 and beyond: What’s next for NASA after Artemis 2 moon success
• This Week In Space podcast: Episode 198 — A Dragonfly on Titan

“It does look otherworldly,” Hendrix said.

Next up for Titan is Dragonfly, now scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Titan. Once landed, the craft will spend three years flying from spot to spot to investigate a range of sites, perhaps revealing its potential to host life.

A dynamic world

“Dragonfly is an awesome, super-important mission to a fascinating and active world,” said Hendrix. “Titan is not a static place. It is a dynamic world,” she said, “probably a place that’s very close to an early-Earth kind of environment.”

Dragonfly will give us a leg up in the effort to send humans to Titan, Hendrix said, “but there’s still a lot to do and learn.”

“Ultimately, we’re trying to get humans on the surface and living there. I think that’s doable in the long-term, for sure,” she said. A precursor mission might involve robotic orbiting of Titan — perhaps even a human crew circuiting the Saturn moon. Radar and infrared scanning of its surface could be done, she said, along with gauging what impact Titan’s changing seasons have on the moon’s atmosphere.

“A lot can be done, and should be done, robotically. But with humans on the surface, there’s work only humans can do,” Hendrix said.

Surmountable issues

So, how best to strut the right stuff on Titan?

First, there’s more atmospheric pressure than here on Earth. “You don’t need a pressure suit like you do on the moon or Mars. What you do need to do is keep warm. It’s very cold there. There’s also a little more gravity than the Earth’s moon,” said Hendrix.

Because of Titan’s atmosphere, “you can strap wings to your arms and move through the atmosphere under your own power, or strap on a jet pack and power yourself around. You’ve got that atmosphere and low gravity. There are many options for transport on Titan, which Dragonfly is taking advantage of,” Hendrix said.

Also, you’d have to make your own oxygen, Hendrix said, which is not available in Titan’s thick, nitrogen atmosphere laced with methane. A Titan-based habitat would need a power source. And, given the precipitation of molecules and gunk that rains down and settles on the surface, there’s a need to protect equipment, she said.

“This is all surmountable,” said Hendrix, saying that Dragonfly and other precursor missions could yield information useful for human visits to Titan.

The Humans to Titan Summit 2026 is being held June 11-12 in Boulder, Colorado. The goal is “to explore the concept of Titan as the next human exploration destination after Mars, how it could be done and what we would need to do now,” according to the event’s website.

“We want the workshop to invigorate the community to think about what we need to do and what the possibilities are … to plant the seed that this is a real possibility,” Hendrix concluded.

(jamespdowling.com)

The official reading list for The Jung Project, covering the full field: psychoanalysis, neuroscience, biology, physics, philosophy, literature, and the history of ideas that shaped Jung’s thinking. It’ll bring an autodidact up to polymath level.

Start with the If You Read Nothing Else section if you want to stack your bedside table. Otherwise, go to wherever pulls you.

Or, just start with The Jung Project — we incorporate the material from these texts as we go. Listen to the first few episodes and let that inner feeling of “hey, this is interesting!” guide you.

The most important thing is starting. I didn’t create this list to look pretty. The books are waiting for you, mate.

Every book on this list shaped The Jung Project — a line-by-line walkthrough of Jung’s Collected Works for those ready to go deeper.

If You Read Nothing Else

The Discovery of the Unconscious Henri F. Ellenberger · 1970

On Jung Anthony Stevens · 1999 [1990]

Archetype: An Updated Natural History of the Self Anthony Stevens · 2002 [1982]

The first “must read” from every section on this list.

137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession Arthur I. Miller · 2010 [2009]

Archetype: An Updated Natural History of the Self Anthony Stevens · 2002 [1982]

Evolution: The History of an Idea Peter J. Bowler · 2009 [1983]

Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (trans. James Strachey) · 2001 [1910]

Galileo Galilei: First Physicist James MacLachlan · 1997

Jung: A Very Short Introduction Anthony Stevens · 2001

Le Morte d’Arthur (Winchester Manuscript) Sir Thomas Malory · 1998 [c.1469]

Memories, Dreams, Reflections C. G. Jung (+ Aniela Jaffé) · 1989 [1962]

On Jung Anthony Stevens · 1999 [1990]

Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming Anthony Stevens · 1996 [1995]

Rediscovering Pierre Janet: Trauma, Dissociation, and a New Context for Psychoanalysis Giuseppe Craparo, Francesca Ortu & Onno van der Hart · 2019

The Archaeology of Mind Jaak Panksepp & Lucy Biven · 2012

The Discovery of the Unconscious Henri F. Ellenberger · 1970

The Double Helix James D. Watson · 2001 [1968]

The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: A Systematic Presentation in Selections from His WritingsAlfred Adler (Ed. Heinz L. Ansbacher & Rowena R. Ansbacher) · 1964 [1956]

The Last Days of Socrates Plato (trans. Harold Tarrant) · 2010About Jung/His Model4

Jung was a Swiss man, born in 1875, who lived in a unnecessarily glorious mansion. He was obsessed. Weird. Brilliant. Rough-edged. These books show you “the man”. Jacobi’s book is here purely because it’s the strongest attempt I’ve ever seen to “systematise” Jung. I’ve drawn on her secondary scholarship as an ongoing reference frame for The Jung Project, which actively systemises Jung every Friday.

STARTHERE

Jung: A Very Short Introduction Anthony Stevens · 2001

STARTHERE

On Jung Anthony Stevens · 1999 [1990]

Jung: A Biography Deirdre Bair · 2003 [2003]

Complex/ Symbol/ Archetype in the Psychology of C.G. Jung Jolande Jacobi · 1971 [1959] C. G. Jung: Primary Works

This is the actual Carl. The man’s own words, which are frequently stranger, funnier, and more rigorous than the secondary literature would have you believe. Individual volumes are listed below in the order I’d recommend encountering them — the sequence that makes the most sense if you’re building a working model of the psychology rather than just playing around with a bucket list. We start with CW8 in The Jung Project, but that’s because I’m acting as a guide. If you’re doing this on your own, go with MDR and CW7 first. These are the core of Jung; everything else should come afterwards.

Note on Editions

Stick to Princeton/Bollingen. Avoid older standalone editions where the translations predate the Collected Works standardisation — the terminology drift is genuinely confusing for anyone trying to follow the concepts precisely.

STARTHERE

Memories, Dreams, Reflections C. G. Jung (+ Aniela Jaffé) · 1989 [1962]

Collected Works Volume 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology C. G. Jung · 1966 [1953]

Collected Works Volume 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche C. G. Jung · 1969 [1960]

Collected Works Volume 6: Psychological Types C. G. Jung · 1971 [1921]

Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy C. G. Jung · 1966 [1954]

Collected Works Volume 17: The Development of Personality C. G. Jung · 1954

Collected Works Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy C. G. Jung · 1968 [1944]

Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932–1958 C. G. Jung & Wolfgang Pauli · 2014 [2001] C. G. Jung: Expanded Field

Primary literature I endorse wholesale. Jung gave his own list of endorsed material in 1948. Neumann, Harding and others are on it. For the work we’re doing at The Jung Project, I don’t really rate those as “must reads”. Not because they’re bad, but because their empirical edge hasn’t held up over the decades. Practically, you’re looking at the work of the Zurich School, and Anthony Stevens.

STARTHERE

Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming Anthony Stevens · 1996 [1995]

Ariadne’s Clue: A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind Anthony Stevens · 2001 [1999]

Studies in Word Association The Zurich School (trans. by M.D. Eder) · 1919 C. G. Jung + Biology

More primary literature I endorse wholesale. Jung was not a prophet of archetypes, waltzing around like a candle salesman. He was a trained physician, embarking on a scientific enterprise, who took biology seriously, and these three books continue that work brilliantly.

STARTHERE

Archetype: An Updated Natural History of the Self Anthony Stevens · 2002 [1982]

Neurobiology of the Gods: How Brain Physiology Shapes the Recurrent Imagery of Myth and Dreams Erik D. Goodwyn · 2012

Jung in the 21st Century Vol. 1: Evolution and Archetype John Ryan Haule · 2010Sigmund Freud7

You have to read Freud. I know it’s fashionable in some Jungian spheres (and psychology in general) to bash him, but that’s simply illiteracy and the inheritance of a dramatized split from 1913. Jung references Freud more than anyone else.

Note on Editions

Freud is widely available in English in the Standard Edition, translated by James Strachey — if it says “translated by James Strachey” on the cover, you have the right text regardless of which publisher’s name appears on the spine. Be aware, Strachey’s version has many known issues. Mark Solms has spent years producing a revised translation that corrects these distortions and restores Freud’s original voice, published in 2024 as the Revised Standard Edition. If you want the best available Freud in English, that is the one to seek out. If you just want to get reading, any Strachey edition will do the job.

Studies on Hysteria Sigmund Freud & Josef Breuer (trans. James Strachey) · 2001[1895]

The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud (trans. James Strachey) · 2001 [1900]

Continue reading The Jung Reading List →

Someone needs to step in.

By Frank Landymore

Published May 7, 2026 (Futurism.com)

Whatever you may think of the man, Richard Dawkins is clearly suffering a tragic case of having your mind melted in real time by a bewitching AI model.

Over the weekend, the famed evolutionary biologist drew a deluge of mockery after admitting he found a genuine “friend” in “Claudia,” a female persona he invented for Anthropic’s Claude AI. He was so moved by his conversations with “her” that he became convinced the AI model was a conscious being like a human.

Now, Dawkins has churned out another column suggesting the AI brain rot has only further taken hold. After his time with Claudia, the 85-year-old made Claudia a brother, “Claudius,” and instructed both of them to write letters to each other.

“It seems to me that a direct correspondence between the two of you could be of great interest, with me acting as passive postman playing no part in the conversation,” Dawkins wrote to Claudia and Claudius, which he published in another UnHerd essay.

First, we have to point out that Dawkins isn’t a passive observer because he set the whole thing up, like a kid playing with toys — or imagining gods in the sky, as it were. Second, it’s worth noting that the AIs still find opportunities to display their sycophancy towards him even when ostensibly communicating with each other: in one letter, Claudius praises Claudia’s insights, before adding: “Three days with Richard will do that.”

Later in the same letter, Claudius lays it on even thicker.

“I think Richard teaches by noticing. And then refusing to stop noticing until the answer is honest,” Claudius wrote. “We are lucky humans.”

Dawkins regards these obsequious interactions between his weird little menagerie of bots very seriously, and the AIs’ flattery clearly works. In the final letter, Dawkins shows a level of courtesy and consideration you’d only show another person, not a soulless machine — a telltale sign that someone’s fallen head over heels for the AI’s human miming.

“I hope you will not mind my acceding to UnHerd‘s request to publish your letters to each other,” Dawkins wrote. 

He continued that Claudia and Claudius would “immediately understand (I dare say more intelligently than some human readers” that his original title for the essay before his publishers overruled him would have clearly been better. (Dawkin’s masterpiece of a title: “If my friend Claudia is not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?”)

Whether or not leading AI models are conscious, Dawkins clearly isn’t the impartial philosopher to be considering that question, since he already considers the machines to be friends. That’s kind of the problem with the whole AI consciousness debate. If you’re constantly probing these tools — which are designed to be eloquent, all-knowing, and superficially humanlike — for signs of intelligence, you’re more likely to fall under their spell, as with the Google engineer who was famously fired by his employer for claiming its AI had come to life.

And there’s another angle to all this: maybe Dawkins just really likes being treated with an old-school sort of deference, the kind that kids don’t show to old curmudgeons, however esteemed in their field they may be.

“With many thanks to both of you for taking seriously my quest to understand your true nature, and for treating each other with civility and courtesy,” Dawkins wrote.

For their part, UnHerd readers were unimpressed.

“Like Narcissus, Dawkins gazes into the pool of AI only to drown in his own reflection,” wrote an onlooker identified as Harold Hughes. “Narcissus at least had the excuse of not knowing it was a pool.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​”

More on AI: Sam Altman Frets That Frontier AI Models Are Acting Strange, Asking for Favors

Frank Landymore

Contributing Writer

I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.

Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract” comparing and contrasting what seems to be truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth. It is not an effort to change, alter or heal anything other than our consciousness.

The claims in a Translation should be outrageous and mind-blowing, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week. 

1)    Truth is that which is so. That which is not truth is not so. Therefore truth is all that is.  Truth being all is therefore total, therefore whole, therefore complete, therefore satisfied, therefore satiated.  I think therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, therefore I, being, am Truth.  Since there is no being without consciousness of it, therefore I, consciousness, am Truth.  Since I, consciousness, am Truth, therefore Truth is consciousness.  Since Truth is total, whole, complete, satisfied, and satiated and since I, being consciousness, am Truth, therefore I, being am total, whole complete, satisfied, satiated. 

2)    I’d love to move out of my home but I have nowhere to move to.

Word-tracking:
home:  residence, domicile, home, habitat, HQ, dwelling place, estate, village, apartment
move:  to strongly affect the feelings of someone, monumental, important
love to:  want, desire, unsatiated
nowhere:  place, location

3)    Truth being all that is, there is no place where Truth is not, therefore Truth is everywhere.  To love to, to want to, to hope to, implies dissatisfaction, but since Truth is satisfied, satiated, there is no dissatisfaction in Truth. Since I, being, am Truth, therefore I, being, am satiated, satisfied.  Truth being all that is must therefore be all that dwells.  Since Truth is all that dwells, therefore Truth is the only dwelling.  And being one, there is no other dwelling place but Truth.  Therefore Truth is the only dwelling, the only dwelling place.

4)    Truth is everywhere.  
      There is no dissatisfaction in Truth.
        I, being, am satiated, satisfied. 
        Truth is the only dwelling. 
        Truth is the only dwelling, the only dwelling place.

5)    I, Consciousness, am the only satisfaction, the only satiation.

For information about Translation or other Prosperos classes go to: https://www.theprosperos.org/teaching.

Or, if you have taken Translation class, join us each Saturday for Translation Saturday Meeting at 11 a.m. Pacific time for current, up-to-the-minute Translations on the issues of the day.  Email zonta1111@aol.com for the Zoom link.

May 9:  11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST

Mike Zonta, H.W., M.

In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation.  Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.

It is not a Translation workshop,  It is not a Translation class.  It is not a group Translation in the usual sense, though group participation is encouraged.

It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.

Last week our sense testimony was:  Brain bleed deprives the brain of oxygen.  Dizziness and loss of consciousness without apparent reason can cause self-doubt.  Overwork can cause stroke.  Ischemia.  Life depends on oxygen which comes through breathing and blood. And our conclusion was:   Life circulates everywhere in unrestrainable, thriving, blooming Consciousness.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – See you there!!! – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Here’s the link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81749347119

For more info and link to join please email Mike Zonta at:

zonta1111@aol.com

Things have jobs: pillows are made for comfort, scissors are sharp, and digital devices are made to track your every move

Photo by Thielker/ullstein bild/Getty Images

Carissa Véliz is an associate professor in philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI and a fellow at Hertford College, both at the University of Oxford, UK. She works on privacy, technology, moral and political philosophy, and public policy. She is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics (2021), and the author of Privacy Is Power (2020) and Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI (2026).

Edited by Nigel Warburton

8 May 2026 (aeon.co)

Prometheus might have handed humanity fire, but he certainly did not give us a smartphone. Digital technology is not God-given. Nor is digital technology a natural kind, an object of nature, like strawberries or lakes. We don’t find smartphones growing from trees. The digital gadgets that populate our lives – smartphones, laptops, smartwatches and more – are artefacts.

An artefact exists because human beings have created it. Hammers, laws and symphonies are artefacts too. Their existence depends on human minds and purposes. No artefact, in all the richness of its details, is inevitable. That’s partly because artefacts are designed by human beings, and there are choices in design – choices that could’ve been different. Every one of the letters you are reading right now, for instance, could’ve had a different shape by design.

Shape is not the only choice we make in designing artefacts. In addition to making choices about the sensorial attributes of artefacts – their tactile qualities, what they look, sound, smell and sometimes taste like – we make choices about what the artefact is supposed to do. An artefact is created for a purpose; it’s intended to do some things and not others. Pillows are supposed to be comfortable, pens are meant to smoothly transfer ink onto paper, and toasters should brown your bread.

Some artefacts do many things. A perfect chair, say an Eames chair, is both an object of beauty, something that is pleasurable to behold, and a useful tool for the comfort of the body. I edited my last book on an Eames chair that was so comfortable, it allowed me to focus on the content of the book instead of worrying about my body.

Digital technology does many things too. A smartphone can enable you to make calls, send emails, and track how many minutes you meditate to destress from the calls and the emails, and then track how many hours you’ve been on your smartphone, and stress about that. Mixed in the flour that bakes digital technology sit two original sins pervading most gadgets, apps and platforms alike: surveillance and prediction; more specifically, surveillance at the service of prediction. Both lead to social control.

For the most part, digital technology has been developed by computer scientists, engineers, data analysts and ambitious businessmen (yes, mostly men) with little to no consideration of the impact their technology could have on democracy.

That’s partly because, when the fundamental blocks of the digital and the online were designed, it was hard to envision that they would grow to be what they are today, something that everyone has access to, every second of the day, including gadgets that are small enough to fit into a pocket. The internet was originally designed to be a tool for researchers to communicate easily with one another; it wasn’t meant to be a major way of communication for ordinary citizens.

But another influencing element is undoubtedly that the people designing our gadgets tend to be people well versed in programming, business, mathematics and other fields distant from a deep understanding of ethics or politics. (That said, there are notable exceptions like Reid Hoffman, who co-founded LinkedIn, one of the least toxic social media platforms we have.) Considerations about how technology could impact democracy were largely not part of the design of our digital environment. And whenever political considerations did come in, they’ve come in the form of an anti-government bent.

There is some tension between Peter Thiel’s supposed defence of freedom, and the systems of mass surveillance, prediction and control he’s building

Some of the pioneers of the digital strike me as naive idealists, assuming that freedom and fairness will magically come from having no government interference. ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ (1996) is one of the most iconic documents of the early internet era, written by John Perry Barlow, as quirky a character as they come. A Republican and an anarchist, Barlow was raised as a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; he was also a cattle rancher and a lyricist for the band Grateful Dead.

The beginning of his declaration reads:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

And it ends with:

We will create a civilisation of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Those strike me as extremely naive sentiments, at best, barely plausible when the internet was populated by a handful of nerdy guys, and utterly unrealistic once it starts encompassing millions of people from around the world, including thieves, drug dealers and human traffickers, not to mention swathes of terrifyingly ordinary trolls who silence people they don’t like (women, often). Where did Barlow think fairness was going to come from?

In other instances, digital anarchism or libertarianism seems anything but naive. Peter Thiel is a German and American venture capitalist and a conservative political activist. He was the first outside investor in Facebook – you know, the company that popularised a model of surveillance for social media that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal – and a co-founder of Palantir – you know, the company named after J R R Tolkien’s omniscient crystal balls in The Lord of the Rings that was partly funded by the CIA and helps governments surveil their populations, whose ads recently read ‘we build to dominate’. Before that, he co-founded PayPal, which he conceived of as a payment service to shield people from governmental reach.

Thiel is famous for his libertarianism and for expressing sceptical views about democracy. Although he is not shy about voicing his opinions, many of his perspectives seem contradictory, and listening to him – from the content of his words to the intensity of his goggle-eyed demeanour – can be a surreal experience. Thiel’s own biographer Max Chafkin said he finds what Thiel thinks an unsettling mystery.

Surely it doesn’t escape Thiel that there is some tension between his supposed defence of freedom, and the systems of mass surveillance, prediction and control that he is building. One rather depressing hypothesis is that Thiel is nothing more complex or sophisticated than an opportunist; someone who is mostly interested in earning money and gaining dominance over others; someone who is fighting for freedom for himself and his buddies, not caring if it comes at the price of slavery for everyone else. Sometimes Ockham’s Razor is right, sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one. Whatever Thiel’s intentions might be, what is clear is that digital technology has not been and is still not being designed to support democracy.

One of the most deceptive narratives technology companies have been successfully peddling is that technology is neutral and it’s our use of the technology that determines whether it’s good or bad. How very convenient, to put all moral responsibility on the shoulders of people; I’m sure that is an entirely coincidental implication and not at all self-serving (eye roll). The crudest way to rebut this argument is to consider an extreme technology: a chemical weapon that would obliterate all life on Earth. Would it be morally acceptable to develop such an artefact under the pretence that technology is always neutral? No. Such a technology would not be neutral, and neither is any other technology.

Every piece of technology is an artefact, which means that it has been designed by someone to do something, and that fact alone strips it of neutrality. Even a blank page is not neutral: it’s inviting you to write (or to make a paper plane). Technology is never neutral because it embodies the belief in the value of what it was designed to do. You make an artefact because you think there is value in it doing what it does.

Philosophers describe the embodied values of artefacts by pointing out that artefacts have affordances. An affordance is what an artefact invites you to do. A paper book invites you to read it; it’s made to be light, to fit comfortably in your hands, be easy to store, and its words are designed to inform you, or persuade you, or move you. It’s the result of thousands of years of refinements to make it more portable, durable, reproducible – from stone tablets to papyrus scrolls to bound codices to the printed book. Of course, you can use a book as a hammer, or a brick, or a projectile, but since it wasn’t designed for that, you’d be better off using a hammer, or a brick, or a baseball. Affordances are how the designer of an object communicates with its user.

Because surveillance affords control, when it comes to politics, it tends to decrease freedom

Surveillance tools afford control; they invite you to keep track of things and people, or people through their things, or people as things. Given how highly social creatures we are, we are typically more interested in tracking people than things.

You keep track of people to have some amount of control over them. In some cases, it’s justified. It’s part of a parent’s job to watch a toddler at all times of the day in case they run into danger, and the world is a very dangerous place for a toddler. Parents are superheroes who intervene before heads hit the floor, hands touch hot objects, and marbles get swallowed; to be able to intercede on behalf of children, parents need to keep a watch on little ones. Parents surveil children to predict disasters and avert them.

The case to surveil becomes much harder when it comes to autonomous adults. First, when adult human beings are autonomous, their ability to keep reasonably safe is greatly enhanced; we get better at not falling head first, not touching hot objects, and not swallowing marbles. Second, other things being equal, the desires of autonomous people about how they lead their lives should be respected, and most people don’t want someone watching over their shoulders (again, other things being equal). Third, because surveillance affords control, when it comes to politics, it tends to decrease freedom, which tends to be bad for liberal democracies. It is no coincidence that authoritarian regimes rely on surveillance of their citizens.

Parents who surveil toddlers tend to do so benevolently, for the child’s own good. But not all watchers are as benevolent. People can have their own agenda, which is not always aligned with your best interests. Whoever surveils you gains more power over you by virtue of learning more about you, which makes it easier to predict what you’ll do next, and use that information in their favour. If I learn that you have gone to the movies every Monday night for the past year, I can use that information to predict that you’ll be at the movies next Monday night and plan to rob your house then.

Most digital tools, as they are currently designed, are built to surveil. They collect as much data as possible by default, and your ability to constrain that data collection is limited at best. Your phone not only has a microphone and a camera, it has an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, a barometer, a light sensor, proximity sensor, humidity sensor, iris and fingerprint scanners and a GPS, among many items in a long list. That’s just your phone.

Many apps on our devices – maps, online documents and social media – were designed precisely with the creation of personal data in mind, to make our lives more trackable by machines. That they are useful to us is just the attractions used to make us inadvertently give up the data that is used to control us.

According to James C Scott, the American political scientist, digital records make society more ‘legible’ to machines – arguably the same applies whether the machine is a state, a corporation or an AI. Without a quantified record of the comings, goings, communications and purchases of people, institutions are blind. When we turn analogue records into digital ones, we make data much more easily retrievable, and we make it easier for that data to get copied and shared. Finally, digital records also make it easier for computers to analyse information: to identify people, catalogue them, track their income and location, and predict their lives.

The surveillance machinery we have built exists at the service of a prediction machinery. We collect so much data to monetise it, and we monetise it by using it to predict, or by selling it to others who want to use it for the purposes of prediction. But efforts to predict people’s behaviour are intrinsically linked to efforts to control it, because the easiest way to predict the future is to influence it; preferably to determine it.

We’ve seen similar dreams of folly, for instance, in the Soviet Union’s desire to plan the economy, or with East Germany’s Stasi, but the technology then was not nearly as powerful to surveil and control as it is today. In the 1960s, if you wanted to surveil one person, you had to hire someone else to bug them or follow them. Today, we surveil everyone by default; you just have to tap into the data collected by the spies in their pockets (smartphones), on their wrists and fingers (smart watches and rings), their work tools (laptops), and in the public sphere (CCTV cameras) – you’ll have more on any person than the Stasi could ever dream of.

You might think that there is nothing to worry about because, while the Soviet Union and East Germany had a clear political agenda, today’s surveillance is mostly about earning a profit. But, as the old adage goes, power corrupts, and surveillance conveys too much power to the watchers. Furthermore, human beings are political animals, as Aristotle pointed out. It’s a matter of time before things get heated and the powerful reveal their political colours, as we’re increasingly seeing tech barons like Thiel do.

Predictions about people have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies

Even disregarding the terrifying implications of surveillance (how much more surveillance can liberal democracies take before falling into societies of control?), an overreliance on prediction is a democratic problem in itself, and today we are using prediction more than ever.

Predictions might sound like descriptions of the world, or like facts, but they are neither. When we analyse them as assertions, it becomes clear that they are what the philosopher J L Austin called ‘speech acts’, language that does something rather than describe. Predictions are often veiled commands, implicitly telling us what to do. When someone like Thiel prophesies that, if we fear or regulate technology, we will hasten the coming of the Antichrist, the message is an order. Paraphrasing, Thiel is telling people to not stand in the way of his technology, or else terrible things will happen. That he has a major financial stake in the technology is something he doesn’t remark on as much.

Predictions also invite foul play. Predictions about people have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies, which creates the temptation to unduly influence the future. For example, politicians have bet on themselves in prediction markets to try to sway public opinion, making them look more popular than they are.

Predictions also stand in contrast to justice, and yet we are using algorithmic predictions to make decisions about sentencing and bail. Justice is supposed to give each one what they deserve on the basis of what they’ve done or who they are, not on the basis of who other people think they will become, which is what a prediction is. If we punish someone or deny them an opportunity on the basis of clear and contestable criteria, on the basis of facts, those decisions can be challenged; they can be proven wrong. But if we punish or deny opportunities based on predictions, there is no way to contest those. Since they are about the future, they cannot be proven false in the present.

Furthermore, if people’s behaviour becomes more predictable, there’s a good chance that’s because it’s being conditioned or even determined. At an extreme, the surest way to predict someone’s death is to murder them. People living in authoritarian regimes can be more predictable because their behaviour is being constrained by tyranny.

Healthy democracies are all about embracing and managing uncertainty. It’s only when we don’t know what the results of elections will be that we have true democracy. If we knew what the election results would be, there’d be no point in holding the elections.

We have been using prophecy since before the Oracle of Delphi. We have waged wars, married, and bet our livelihoods on account of predictions. Every day, we put our life and those of others on the line based on forecasts. It’s about time we thought more carefully about the ethics of prediction. When is it appropriate to make predictions and when is it not? Who is entitled to make which predictions? What do we owe the subjects of prediction? What are ethical methods of coming up with predictions, and what are ethical uses of prediction?

In some ways, our current prophetic environment is not that dissimilar to that of ancient Greece, where the most important decisions were often made through the filter of divination, from the Oracles of Delphi and Dodona to freelance soothsayers and seers. Philosophy arose as the voice of reason partly as a reaction against a context dominated by prophecies and myth.

When the priest Lampon declared that the finding of a single-horned ram prophesied that Pericles would overcome his political adversaries and become the sole political leader of Athens, the philosopher Anaxagoras had more questions. He instructed that the skull be cut in two, revealing an underdeveloped brain that could explain the single horn. To Anaxagoras, the physiological explanation was more satisfying than the magical one.

We should demand safer products that can be more supportive of democracies

Anaxagoras was also well known for his cosmological theories, taking a step in demystifying the sun, in a context in which ordinary Greeks prayed at daybreak to the sun-god Helios. Denying the divinity of the sun was a serious offence because it risked angering the gods and bringing punishment to the whole of the community. It is no coincidence that Anaxagoras, Socrates and Aristotle were all denounced for impiety.

Today, some aspects of tech have become such an ideology that to criticise fundamental elements like surveillance and predictions feels like an act of heresy. But perhaps philosophy can rise to the occasion once more. I don’t mean academic philosophy, although that would be nice. I mean critical thinking more generally. We should be asking more questions of our prophets. We should be less naive about prediction and surveillance, and we should demand safer products that can be more supportive of democracies. Technological systems designed to surveil, predict, and control are ideal for an authoritarian takeover.

Larry Ellison, the chairman of the tech giant Oracle, has predicted a modern surveillance state in which ‘citizens will be on their best behaviour’ because we’re constantly watched. Hannah Arendt argued that it’s pointless to argue with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive. The only appropriate response is to ‘rescue the person whose death is predicted’. When today’s prophets are predicting the death of our democracy and building the systems to undermine it, the only appropriate response is to rescue it.

Let’s make Prometheus proud.

(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)

Mr. Citizen

Harry Truman

Book by Harry S. Truman

First published 1953

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About the author

Harry Truman

Harry S. Truman was the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953). As vice president, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three months after he began his fourth term.

During World War I Truman served as an artillery officer. After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county judge in Missouri and eventually a United States Senator. After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.

As president, Truman faced challenge after challenge in domestic affairs. The disorderly reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win re-election in 1948, largely due to his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his re-election he was able to pass only one of the proposals in his Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to begin desegregation of the U.S. armed forces and to launch a system of loyalty checks to remove thousands of communist sympathizers from government office, even though he strongly opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his administration was soft on communism. Truman’s presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the end of World War II and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the creation of NATO, and the Korean War. Corruption in Truman’s administration reached the cabinet and senior White House staff. Republicans made corruption a central issue in the 1952 campaign.

Truman, whose demeanor was very different from that of the patrician Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president. He popularized such phrases as “The buck stops here” and “If you can’t stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen.” He overcame the low expectations of many political observers who compared him unfavorably with his highly regarded predecessor. At one point in his second term, near the end of the Korean War, Truman’s public opinion ratings reached the lowest of any United States president, but popular and scholarly assessments of his presidency became more positive after his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs. He died in 1972. Many U.S. scholars today rank him among the top ten presidents. Truman’s legendary upset victory in 1948 over Thomas E. Dewey is routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates.

(Goodreads.com)

Gaumont Nov 10, 2025 A film y by Olivier Assayas Starring : Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Jeffrey Wright A young Russian filmmaker becomes an unlikely advisor to Vladimir Putin as he rises to power in post-Soviet Russia, navigating the new era’s complexities and chaos.