{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/9a03fe9e-1ff0-4dcc-b3f6-50bd1f016ea4/15694740-ac74-4b0e-8c71-7af847c54951?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Jill Lepore on the Destructive Power of Tech","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6195701f2eacc3a36070252a/619570bccb3c660012e3cf08.jpg?height=200","description":"<p>David talks to the American historian Jill Lepore about the damage new technology can do to democracy, from the 1960s to the present.&nbsp;Who first tried to manipulate the minds of the electorate?&nbsp;Where did the money come from?&nbsp;What happened when the same technology was applied to fighting the Vietnam War?&nbsp;Plus we discuss US presidential elections from 1960 to 2020: do the machines really decide who is going to win, and if he does win this time, what might Joe Biden be able to do about it?</p><p><br></p><p>Talking Points</p><p><br></p><p>The Simulmatics Corporation was one of the first data analytics companies founded in 1959.</p><ul><li>They were collecting personal data, coming up with mathematical models for human behavior, making predictions, and selling that as a service.</li><li>They got their big break in the 1960 election.&nbsp;</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Advertising was basically invented to defend corporations against muckraking journalists.</p><ul><li>It became something else as modern consumer society emerged.</li><li>Eventually, some of the ad agencies began working for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the party of big business, so it’s nor surprising that they’ve always had a leg up in political advertising.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Was the Simulmatics Corporation for real?</p><ul><li>Their insights were not particularly startling.</li><li>The Simulmatics Corporations were liberals who were trying to convince the Democratic Party to take a stronger position on civil rights by telling them that black voters could make a difference in the election.</li><li>There’s something kind of creepy about the whole thing: a bunch of mid-century, white, liberal men building a machine to try to understand people of color and women.</li><li>A tight election is good for huxters. There’s a huge, enabling industry of journalism to oversell this kind of technology.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>There’s a big gap between how we understand politics should work in the physical world and the mysteriousness and anarchy of the digital world.</p><ul><li>Democracies are bad at reforming themselves because the winners are not incentivized to do it.&nbsp;</li><li>The monopoly today is the monopoly of the means of doing politics.&nbsp;</li><li>The pandemic makes it worse. We are now more wedded to our devices and it is harder to conduct campaigns outside of them.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Mentioned in this Episode:</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496103\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Jill Lepore, <em>If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future</em>&nbsp;</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.thelastarchive.com/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Jill’s podcast, ‘The Last Archive: Who Killed Truth?’</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/campaign-chronicles/the-trump-campaigns-mobile-app-is-collecting-massive-amounts-of-voter-data\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Sue Halpern on the Trump campaign’s mobile app</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>Further Learning:&nbsp;</p><ul><li><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-the-simulmatics-corporation-invented-the-future\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Jill in <em>The New Yorker</em>, ‘How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future’</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2019/180-jill-lepore-on-the-american-nation\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Our last episode with Jill on the American Nation</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07sqc95\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Jia Tolentino for the BBC, ‘The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams’</a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Evan Osnos’ profile of Mark Zuckerberg for <em>The New Yorker</em></a></li><li><a href=\"https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2019/211-monopoly-and-muckraking\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"...","author_name":"David Runciman and Catherine Carr"}