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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/05/18, SPi
FUTURE POLITICS
JAMIE
SUSSKIND
LIVING TOGETHER IN A WORLD TRANSFORMED BY TECH
FUTURE
POLITICS
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Jamie Susskind 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933401
ISBN 978–0–19–882561–6
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
This book is dedicated to my parents,

Michelle and Richard
ACK NOWLEDGEMENT S
I could not have written this book without the help of my friends,
colleagues, and family.
Most of Future Politics was completed during a Fellowship at
Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
The Center is a special place, and its staff and Fellows are a constant
source of inspiration. I am also indebted to the staff and members of
Littleton Chambers, who have tolerated my absences and supported
my work with great patience and loyalty.
I have been lucky to find, in Dominic Byatt, the ideal editor:
always insightful, frequently critical, and generally indulgent of my
foibles. My agent, Caroline Michel, has looked after me from the
beginning and I am always thankful to have her on my side. It has
been a pleasure to work with the fine teams at Oxford University
Press and Peters Fraser + Dunlop: Tim Binding, Alexandra Cliff,
Tessa David, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, Phil Henderson, Dan Herron,
Erin Meehan, Laurie Robertson, Sarah Russo, and Olivia Wells. Chris
Summerville expertly copy-edited the final text.
I am grateful to Luciano Floridi, Vicki Nash, and Susannah Otter,
whose early guidance helped to get the project off the ground.
Fred Popplewell’s research was enormously useful. I have benefitted
deeply from conversations with Yochai Benkler, Alex Canfor-
Dumas, Amber Case, Matt Clifford, David Cox, Primavera De
Filippi, Gabriella Fee, Howard Gardner, Josh Glancy, Philip Howard,
Laurence Lessig, Andrew Perlman, Michael Sandel, Bruce Schneier,
Carina Namih, Beth Simone Noveck, David Weinberger, Owain
Williams, Ellen Winner, Tom Woodward, and Jonathan Zittrain.
David Wilkins has been an invaluable source of wisdom and counsel.
viii Acknowledgements
Suzanne Ashman, James Boyle, Lizzie Gaisman, Nicholas Gaisman,

Dorita Gilinski, Philip Howard, and Martha Minow offered invalu-
able commentary on various drafts, and Ifeoma Ajunwa and Maxine
Mackintosh provided feedback that dramatically improved Part V.
I will always be grateful to Olivia Wollenberg for her encourage-
ment and advice as the writing process got underway.
Several readers were kind enough to read the manuscript in full:
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Matt Clifford, Alex Canfor-Dumas, Kim
FitzGerald, Matthew Flinders, Howard Gardner, Beeban Kidron,
Laurence Mills, Marius Ostrowski, Fred Popplewell, Susannah
Prichard, Dov Seidman, Daniel Sleat, Owain Williams, and Tom
Woodward. Their many (many) points of criticism have made it a
much better book. Throughout, Pavithra Mahesh encouraged me,
for better or worse, to write with my own voice. Philippa Greer
made a big difference in a short space of time.
The great Matt Orton has been an unfailing source of writerly
wisdom, feedback, and motivation. Chris and Diana Orton kindly
let me squat in their Edinburgh cottage while I finished writing.
If there is any good political theory in these pages, it is down to
Simon Caney, who fired my passion for the discipline as an under-
graduate and, ten years later, reviewed the manuscript of this book
with his customary rigour.
Finally, I wish to thank my family. I am always amazed by how
fiercely my mum, Michelle, believes in my work. I would be nowhere
without her love and support. She is my surest source of strength and
encouragement. My sister Ali has been a rock: I trust her judgement
entirely and have leaned on it countless times. Her painstaking
labours in the closing stages helped me to get the m anuscript over
the line ( just about) in time.
Writing about the future has become a kind of weird family busi-
ness for the Susskinds. Some readers will know that my dad, Richard
Susskind, has been writing about the impact of technology since
Acknowledgements ix
the early 1980s; and that he and my brother Daniel Susskind (an
economist) co-authored a book called The Future of the Professions
in 2015. If you read that book, you will see the extent of my intel-
lectual debt to them both. Daniel has been my most thoughtful and
generous reader, as well as my fiercest supporter.
I do not have the words to describe what I owe to my dad or
how grateful I am to him. It’s been the greatest joy and good fortune
of my life to have him as my best friend, mentor, and guide. We’ve
been in constant conversation for nearly thirty years, and for the
last few we’ve mostly been talking about this book. His influence
and inspiration are present on every page.
Jamie Susskind
London
May 2018
COPY RIGHT NOTIFIC ATIONS
Chapter 2 epigraph: From Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford

(1934). Copyright © 1934 by Elizabeth M. Morss and James G. Morss.
Used by permission. Courtesy of the estate of Lewis and Sophia
Mumford.
Chapter 4 epigraph: From Wind, Sand, & Stars, Antoine de Saint-

Exupery (1939). Reproduced with permission by the Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry Estate.
Chapter 7 epigraph: From Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

(1949). Copyright © George Orwell, 1949. Reprinted by permis-
sion of Bill Hamilton as the Literary Executor of the Estate of the
Late Sonia Brownell Orwell.
Chapter 9 epigraph: From Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford

(1934). Copyright © 1934 by Elizabeth M. Morss and James G. Morss.
Used by permission. Courtesy of the estate of Lewis and Sophia
Mumford.
Chapter 16 epigraph: From Tragic Choices: the Conflicts Society Confronts

in the Allocation of Tragically Scare Resources by Guido Calabresi and
Philip Bobbitt (1978). Copyright © 1978 by the Fels Center of
Government. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders
prior to publication. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to
rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.
CONTENT S
Introduction 1
PART I THE DIGITAL LIFEWORLD

1. Increasingly Capable Systems 29
2. Increasingly Integrated Technology 42
3. Increasingly Quantified Society 61
4. Thinking Like a Theorist 69
PART II FUTURE POWER

5. Code is Power 89
6. Force 100
7. Scrutiny 122
8. Perception-Control 142
9. Public and Private Power 153
PART III FUTURE LIBERTY

10. Freedom and the Supercharged State 163
11. Freedom and the Tech Firm 188
xiv Contents
PART IV FUTURE DEMOCRACY

12. The Dream of Democracy 211
13. Democracy in the Future 227
PART V FUTURE JUSTICE

14. Algorithms of Distribution 257
15. Algorithms of Recognition 271
16. Algorithmic Injustice 279
17. Technological Unemployment 295
18. The Wealth Cyclone 313
PART VI FUTURE POLITICS

19. Transparency and the New Separation of Powers 345
20. Post-Politics 362
Notes 367
Bibliography 437
Index 491
‘A new political science is needed for a world itself quite

new’
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
Introduction
The future stalks us. It is always waiting, barely out of sight, lurking
around the corner or over the next rise.We can never be sure what
form it will take. Often it catches us entirely unprepared.
Nowadays, many of us share the sense that we are approaching a
time of great upheaval.The world seems to be changing faster than
we can grasp. Often we struggle to explain political events that
would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Sometimes we
don’t even have the words to describe them. Inwardly, we know
that this is just the beginning.
The premise of this book is that relentless advances in science
and technology are set to transform the way we live together, with
consequences for politics that are profound and frightening in
equal measure.We are not yet ready—intellectually, philosophically,
or morally—for the world we are creating. In the next few decades,
old ways of thinking that have served us well for hundreds, even
thousands, of years, will be called into question. New debates, con-
troversies, movements, and ideologies will come to the fore. Some
of our most deeply held assumptions will be revised or abandoned
altogether. Together we will need to re-imagine what it means to
be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and even
what it means for a political system to be democratic. Politics in the
future will be quite unlike politics in the past.
2 FUTURE POLITICS
Politics in the twentieth century was dominated by a central

question: how much of our collective life should be determined by
the state, and what should be left to the market and civil society?
For the generation now approaching political maturity, the debate
will be different: to what extent should our lives be directed and
controlled by powerful digital systems—and on what terms? This
question is at the heart of Future Politics.
In the next few decades, it is predicted, we’ll develop computing
systems of astonishing capability, some of which will rival and
surpass humans across a wide range of functions, even without
achieving an ‘intelligence’ like ours. Before long, these systems will
cease to resemble computers. They’ll be embedded in the physical
world, hidden in structures and objects that we never used to regard
as technology. More and more information about human beings—
what we do, where we go, what we think, what we say, how we
feel—will be captured and recorded as data, then sorted, stored,
and processed digitally. In the long run, the distinctions between
human and machine, online and offline, virtual and real, will fade
into the background.
This transformation will bring some great benefits for civil-
ization. Our lives will be enriched by new ways of playing, working,
travelling, shopping, learning, creating, expressing ourselves, stay-
ing in touch, meeting strangers, coordinating action, keeping fit,
and finding meaning. In the long run, we may be able to augment
our minds and bodies beyond recognition, freeing ourselves from
the limitations of our human biology.
At the same time, however, some technologies will come to hold
great power over us. Some will be able to force us to behave a
certain way, like (to take a basic example) self-driving vehicles that
simply refuse to drive over the speed limit. Others will be powerful
because of the information they gather about us. Merely knowing
we are being watched makes us less likely to do things perceived as
Introduction 3
shameful, sinful, or wrong. Still other technologies will filter what we

see of the world, prescribing what we know, shaping the way we think,
influencing how we feel, and thereby determining how we act.
Those who control these technologies will increasingly control the
rest of us.They’ll have power, meaning they’ll have a stable and wide-
ranging capacity to get us to do things of significance that we wouldn’t
otherwise do. Increasingly, they’ll set the limits of our liberty, decree-
ing what may be done and what is forbidden. They’ll determine
the future of democracy, causing it to flourish or decay. And their
algorithms will decide vital questions of social justice, allocating
social goods and sorting us into hierarchies of status and esteem.
The upshot is that political authorities—generally states—will
have more instruments of control at their disposal than ever before,
and big tech firms will also come to enjoy power on a scale that
dwarfs any other economic entity in modern times. To cope with
these new challenges, we’ll need a radical upgrade of our political
ideas. The great English philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in
his Autobiography of 1873 that, ‘no great improvements in the lot
of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the
fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.’1
It is time for the next great change.
The Next Great Change
We already live in a time of deep political unease. Every day

the news is of bloody civil war, mass displacement of peoples,
ethnic nationalism, sectarian violence, religious extremism, climate
change, economic turbulence, disorienting globalization, rising
inequality, and an array of other challenges too dismal to mention.
It seems like the world isn’t in great shape—and that our public
discourse has sunk to the occasion. Political élites are widely distrusted
4 FUTURE POLITICS
and despised. Two recent exercises in mass democracy in the

English-speaking world, the 2016 US presidential election and
UK Brexit referendum, were rancorous even by the usual unhappy
standards, with opposing factions vying not just to defeat their rivals
but to destroy them. Both were won by the side that promised to
tear down the old order. Neither brought closure or satisfaction.
Increasingly, as Barack Obama noted at the end of his presidency,
‘everything is true, and nothing is true’.2 It’s getting harder for
ordinary citizens (of any political allegiance) to separate fact from
fraud, reality from rumour, signal from noise. Many have given up
trying. The temptation is to hunker down and weather the present
storm without thinking too hard about the future.
That would be a mistake.
If mainstream predictions about the future of technology are close
to the mark, then the transformation on the horizon could be at least
as important for humankind as the industrial revolution, the agricul-
tural revolution, or even the invention of language. Many of today’s
problems will be dwarfed by comparison. Think about the effect that
technology has already had on our lives—how we work, commu-
nicate, treat our illnesses, exercise, eat, study, and socialize—and then
remember that in historical perspective, the digital age is only a few
seconds old. Fully 99.5 per cent of human existence was spent in the
Palaeolithic era, which began about 3 million years ago when humans
began using primitive tools. That era ended about 12,000 years ago
with the last ice age.3 During this long twilight period, people noticed
almost no cultural change at all. ‘The human world that individuals
entered at birth was the same as the one they left at death’.4 If you
consider that the earliest human civilizations emerged some 5,000
years ago, then the seventy or so years that we have lived with modern
computing machines, the thirty or so we have had the world wide
web, and the decade we’ve spent with smartphones don’t seem very
long at all. And while time passes linearly, many developments in
Introduction 5
digital technology are occurring exponentially, the rate of change

accelerating with each passing year.
We have no evidence from the future, so trying to predict it is
inherently risky and difficult. I admire those who try to do so in a
rigorous way, and I have borrowed extensively from their work in
this book. But to be realistic, we should start by acknowledging
that such predictions often badly miss the mark. Much of the future
anticipated in these pages will probably never come to pass, and
other developments, utterly unforeseen, will emerge to surprise us
instead. That said, I believe it is possible to make sensible, informed
guesses about what the future might look like, based on what we
know of the current trends in science, technology, and politics.The
biggest risk would be not to try to anticipate the future at all.
The story is told of an encounter between the Victorian statesman
William Gladstone and the pioneering scientist Michael Faraday.
Faraday was trying to explain his groundbreaking work on electricity
to Gladstone, but Gladstone seemed unimpressed. ‘But what use is
it?’ he asked, with growing frustration; ‘What use is it?’
‘Why sir,’ replied Faraday, reaching the end of his patience, ‘there
is every possibility that you will soon be able to tax it.’
Many innovators, like Faraday, find it hard to explain the social
and practical implications of their work. And the rest of us, like
Gladstone, are too often dismissive of technologies we don’t yet
understand. It can be hard to see the political significance of inven-
tions that, at first glance, seem to have nothing to do with politics.
When confronted with a new gadget or app, we tend not to think
first of all about its implications for the political system. Instead we
want to know: what does it do? How much does it cost? Where can
I get one? This isn’t surprising. In general, technology is something
we encounter most often as consumers. But this rather narrow
attitude now needs to change. We must apply the same scrutiny
and scepticism to the new technologies of power that we have
6 FUTURE POLITICS
always brought to powerful politicians. Technology affects us not

just as consumers but as citizens. In the twenty-first century, the
digital is political.
This book is partly for Gladstones who want to understand
more about technology and partly for Faradays who want to see more
clearly the political significance of their work. But mainly it’s for
ordinary citizens who want to understand the future a bit better—
so if nothing else they can hold the Gladstones and the Faradays
to account.
Philosophical Engineers
Consider the following passage:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differ-
ently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status
quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change
things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see
them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are
crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
These are not the words of a politician.They’re from the voiceover

to ‘Think Different’, a 1997 Apple advertisement featuring iconic
footage of rebels including Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther
King. The ad embodies a worldview, widely held among tech
entrepreneurs, that their work is of philosophical as well as com-
mercial importance. ‘It is commonplace in Silicon Valley,’ explains
Jaron Lanier, ‘for very young people with a startup in a garage to
announce that their goal is to change human culture globally and
profoundly, within a few years, and that they aren’t ready yet to
worry about money, because acquiring a great fortune is a petty
Introduction 7
matter that will take care of itself.’5 There is something attractive

about this way of thinking, partly because it suggests that tech
companies might not be as rapacious as they are sometimes made
out to be. And the basic premise is right: digital technologies do
indeed have an astounding capacity to change the world. Compare
the following statements:
‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it.’
‘We are not analysing a world, we are building it.’
The first is from Karl Marx’s 1845 Theses on Feuerbach.6 It served

as a rallying cry for political revolutionaries for more than a cen-
tury after its publication. The second is from Tim Berners-Lee,
the mild-mannered inventor of the World Wide Web.7 Marx and
Berners-Lee could scarcely be more different in their politics,
temperament, or choice of facial hair. But what they have in
common—in addition to having changed the course of human
history—is a belief in the distinction between making change and
merely thinking about it or studying it. On this view, far from being
a spectral presence out of our control, the future is something we
design and build.
‘We are not experimental philosophers,’ says Berners-Lee, ‘we
are philosophical engineers.’8 It’s a practical and hands-on way of
looking at life, one more familiar to builders and inventors than to
tweedy academics or beturtlenecked philosophers. It also hap-
pens to be the defining mindset of our age. Today, the most
important revolutions are taking place not in philosophy depart-
ments, nor even in parliaments and city squares, but in laborator-
ies, research facilities, tech firms, and data centres. Most involve
developments in digital technology.Yet these extraordinary advances
are taking place in a climate of alarming cultural and intellectual
isolation. With a few exceptions, there is a gulf between the arts
8 FUTURE POLITICS
and the sciences. Political philosophy and social policy rarely appear
in degree programmes for science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics. And if you ask the average liberal arts student how a
computer works, you are unlikely to get a sophisticated response.
In tech firms themselves, few engineers are tasked with thinking
hard about the systemic consequences of their work. Most are
given discrete technical problems to solve. Innovation in the tech
sector is ultimately driven by profit, even if investors are prepared
to take a ‘good idea first, profits later’ approach. This is not a criticism:
it’s just that there’s no reason why making money and improving
the world will always be the same thing. In fact, as many of the
examples in this book show, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest
that digital technology is too often designed from the perspective
of the powerful and privileged.
As time goes on, we will need more philosophical engineers
worthy of the name. And it will become even more important for
the rest of us to engage critically with the work of tech firms,
not least because tech working culture is notorious for its lack of
diversity. Roughly nine out of every ten Silicon Valley executives
are men.9 Despite the fact that African-Americans make up about
10 per cent of computer science graduates and 14 per cent of the
overall workforce, they make up less than 3 per cent of computing
roles in Silicon Valley.10 And many in the tech community hold
strong political views that are way outside the mainstream. More
than 44 per cent of Bitcoin adopters in 2013, for instance, professed
to be ‘libertarian or anarcho-capitalists who favour elimination
of the state’.11
As I will argue, we put so much at risk when we delegate matters
of political importance to the tiny group that happens to be tasked
with developing digital technologies at a given time. That’s true
whether you admire the philosophical engineers of Silicon Valley
or you think that most ‘tech bros’ have the political sophistication
Introduction 9
of a transistor. We need an intellectual framework that can help

us to think clearly and critically about the political consequences
of digital innovation. This book hopes to contribute to such a
framework, using the ideas and methods of political theory.
The Promise of Political Theory
The purpose of philosophy, says Isaiah Berlin, is always the same: to

assist humans ‘to understand themselves and thus operate in the
open, and not wildly, in the dark.’12 That’s our goal too. Political the-
ory aims to understand politics through the concepts we use to
speak about it.13 What is power? When should freedom be curtailed
and on what basis? Does democracy require that everyone has an equal
ability to shape the political process? What is a just distribution of
society’s resources? These are the sorts of questions that political
theorists try to answer. The discipline has a long and rich history.
From Plato and Aristotle in the academies of ancient Greece to
Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the tumult of early
modern Europe, to the giants of twentieth-century political thought
like Hannah Arendt and John Rawls, western political thinkers have
long tried to clarify and critique the world around them, asking
why it is the way it is—and whether it could or should be different.
For several reasons, political theory is well-suited to examining
the interplay of technology and politics. First, the canon of political
thought contains wisdom that has outlived civilizations. It can shed
light on our future predicaments and help us to identify what’s
at stake. We’d be foolish not to plunder the trove of ideas already
available to us, even if we ultimately decide that some of those ideas
need an upgrade or a reboot. Political theory also offers methods of
thinking about the world that help us to raise the level of debate
above assertion and prejudice.
10 FUTURE POLITICS
To my mind, the best thing about political theory is that it

deals with the big themes and questions of politics. It offers a
panoramic view of the political forest where other approaches
might get lost in the trees (or stuck in the branches). That’s neces-
sary, in our case, to do justice to the subject-matter. If we think
that technology could have a fundamental impact on the human
condition, then our analysis of that impact should be fundamental
too. That’s why this book is about four of the most basic political
concepts of all:
Power: How the strong dominate the weak

Liberty: What is allowed and what is prohibited
Democracy: How the people can rule
Social Justice: What duties we owe to each other
In a time of great change, I suggest, it pays to go back to first

principles and think about these concepts quite apart from any par-
ticular legal regime.That way we might be able to imagine a superior
system to the one we have inherited.
Political theory is also useful because it allows us to think critically
not just about politics but also about how we think and speak about
politics. Concepts are the ‘keyholes through which we inevitably see
and perceive reality’.14 When I want to say something to my neigh-
bour about politics, I don’t need to start from scratch. I know that if
I say a process is ‘undemocratic’ then she will have a pretty good
idea of what I mean and the connotations I wish to convey, without
any need for me to explain what democracy is and why it should be
considered a good thing. That’s because we are members of the
same linguistic community, sharing a ‘common stock of concepts’
drawn from our shared history and mythology.15 It’s convenient.
On the other hand, what we want to say about politics can
sometimes be limited by the poverty of the words at our disposal.
Introduction 11
Some things seem unsayable, or unthinkable, because the common

stock of concepts hasn’t yet developed to articulate them. ‘The
limits of my language,’ says Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘mean the limits
of my world.’16
What this means in political terms is that even if we could see
the future clearly, we might not have the words to describe it. It’s
why, so often, we limit our vision of the future to a turbo-charged
version of the world we already live in. ‘If I had asked people what
they wanted,’ said Henry Ford, the first mass-producer of automo-
biles, ‘they would have said faster horses.’ Ford recognized that it
can be hard to conceive of a system radically different from our own.
Failure to keep our language up-to-date only makes it harder.
Why I Wrote this Book
My first real taste of political theory was as at university, where

I fell in love with the discipline under the watchful eye of some
wonderful professors. It sparked an obsession that has stayed with
me since. (I acknowledge in hindsight that my most successful
undergraduate romance may well have been a passionate but doomed
affair with the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel.)
Passion aside, something troubled me about me the discipline of
political theory. Political theorists seemed to pride themselves on
thinking deeply about the history of political ideas but, with some
exceptions, were almost entirely uninterested in their future. I found
this strange: why would the same scholars—so sensitive to context
when writing about the past—discuss politics as if the world will
be the same in 2050 as it was in 1950? It seemed that a good deal
of very clever political theory was of little practical application
because it did not engage with the emerging realities of our time.
When I thought about politics in the future, I thought about
12 FUTURE POLITICS
Orwell, Huxley, Wells—all novelists from the early twentieth cen-

tury rather than theorists from the twenty-first. It turns out that I
wasn’t alone: since the election of Donald Trump to the US presi-
dency in late 2016, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has surged up the
best seller lists. But this prompts the question: if we want to under-
stand the world as it will be in 2050, should we really have to rely
on a work of fiction from 1949?
After I left university and became involved in my own modest
political causes, my niggling sense of unease—that political theory
might be unable, or unwilling, to address the looming challenges
of my generation—became a more urgent concern. What if devel-
opments in technology were to happen so fast that we lacked the
intellectual apparatus to make sense of them? What if, unthinkingly,
we were about to unleash a future that we couldn’t understand, let
alone control?
I wanted answers, and that’s why I began working on this book.
The Politics of Technology
Before ploughing on, let’s begin with a simple question: what is the
connection between digital technology and politics?
Technology in General
New technologies make it possible to do things that previously

couldn’t be done; and they make it easier to do some things we could
already do.17 This is their basic social significance. More often than
not, the new opportunities created by technology are minor in
nature: an ingenious new way of grinding coffee beans, for instance,
is unlikely to lead to the overthrow of the state. But sometimes
the consequences can be profound. In the industrial revolution, the
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1899:
"German economists are not exaggerating when they say this

Empire's people and capital are operating in every part of the
world. Not only Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Lübeck, and Kiel—i.
e., the seaport cities—but towns far inland, have invested
millions in foreign enterprises. In the Americas, North and
South, in Australia, in Asia, in a large part of Africa,
German settlements, German factories, German merchants, and
German industrial leaders are at work. Nor is it always in
settlements under the Empire's control that this influence is
strongest. In Senegambia, on the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast,
in Zanzibar and Mozambique, in Australia, Samoa, the Marshall
Islands, Tahiti, Sumatra, and South and Central America, there
are powerful commercial organizations aiding the Empire. From
Vladivostock to Singapore, on the mainland of Asia, and in
many of the world's most productive islands, the influence of
German money and thrift is felt. In Central America and the
West Indies, millions of German money are in the plantations;
so, too, in the plantations along the Gold Coast. In
Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba,
Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Venezuela, Brazil, etc., German capital
plays a very important part in helping to develop the
agricultural and in some cases the manufacturing and
commercial interests. A consequence of this development is
seen in the numerous banking institutions whose fields of
operation show that German commerce is working more and more
in foreign parts. These banks look after and aid foreign
investment as well as the Empire's other commercial relations.
They help the millions of Germans in all parts of the world to
carry on trade relations, not only with the Fatherland, but
with other countries.
"These are the links in a long and very strong chain of gold
uniting the colonies with the Mother Country. Quite recently,
large quantities of German capital have been invested in
various industries. The Empire's capital in United States
railroads is put down at $180,000,000. In America, Germans
have undertaken manufacturing. They have used German money to
put up breweries, hat factories, spinning, weaving, and paper
mills, tanneries, soap-boiling establishments, candle mills,
dye houses, mineral-water works, iron foundries, machine
shops, dynamite mills, etc. Many of these mills use German
machinery, and not a few German help. The Liebig Company, the
Chilean saltpeter mines, the Chilean and Peruvian metal mines,
many of the mines of South Africa, etc., are in large part
controlled by German money and German forces. Two hundred
different kinds of foreign bonds or papers are on the Berlin,
Hamburg, and Frankfort exchanges. Germany has rapidly risen to
a very important place in the financial, industrial, and
mercantile world. Will she keep it? Much will depend on her
power to push herself on the sea."
United States Consular Reports,

September, 1899, page 127.
{248}
GERMANY: A. D. 1899.
Military statistics.
A report presented to the Reichstag showed the total number of

men liable for service in 1899, including the surplus from
previous years, was 1,696,760. Of these 716,998 were 20 years
of age, 486,978 of 21 years, 362,568 of 22 years, and 130,216
of more than 22 years. The whereabouts of 94,224 was unknown,
and 97,800 others failed to appear and sent no excuse; 427,586
had already undertaken military duties, 579,429 cases were
either adjourned or the men rejected (for physical reasons),
1,245 were excluded from the service, 43,196 were exempt,
112,839 were incorporated in the naval reserve, 226,957 were
called upon to join the colors, leaving a surplus of 5,187;
there were 23,266 volunteers for the army and 1,222 for the
navy. Of the 226,957 who joined the colors 216,880 joined the
army as combatants and 4,591 as non-combatants, and 5,486
joined the navy. Of the 5,486 the maritime population
furnished 3,132 and the inland 2,354. There were 21,189 men
who entered the army before attaining the regulation age, and
1,480 under age who entered the navy; 33,652 of the inland
population and only 189 of the maritime were condemned for
emigrating without leave; while 14,150 inland and 150 maritime
cases were still under consideration at the end of the year.
GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (February).

Chinese anti-missionary demonstrations in Shantung.
See (in this volume)

CHINA: A. D. 1899.

Purchase of Caroline, Pelew and Marianne Islands from Spain.

CAROLINE AND MARIANNE ISLANDS.
GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (May-July).

Representation in the Peace Conference at The Hague.

PEACE CONFERENCE.
GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (May-August).

Advice to the South African Republic.

SOUTH AFRICA (THE TRANSVAAL):
A. D. 1899 (MAY-AUGUST).
GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (June).

State of German colonies.
The following report on German colonies for the year ending
June 30, 1899, was made to the British Foreign Office by one
of the secretaries of the Embassy at Berlin:
"The number of Europeans resident in the German African

Protectorates, viz., Togoland, Cameroons, South-West Africa,
and East Africa, at the time of the issue of the latest
colonial reports in the course of 1899 is given as 4,522 men,
women, and children, of whom 3,228 were Germans. The expense
to the home government of the African colonies, together with
Kiao-chao in the Far East, the Caroline and Samoa Islands in
the South Seas, and German New Guinea and its dependencies, is
estimated at close upon £1,500,000 for 1900, the Imperial
Treasury being asked to grant in subsidies a sum nearly double
that required last year. Kiao-chao is included for the first
time in the Colonial Estimates, and Samoa is a new item. The
Imperial subsidy has been increased for each separate
Protectorate, with the single exception of the Caroline
Islands, which are to be granted £5,000 less than last year.
East Africa receives about £33,000 more; the Cameroons,
£10,000; South-West Africa, £14,000; Togoland, £800; New
Guinea, £10,000; and the new items are: £489,000 for Kiao-chao
(formerly included in the Naval Estimates), and £2,500 for
Samoa. A Supplementary Vote of £43,265 for the Protectorate
troops in the Cameroons is also now before the Budget
Committee. …
"Great efforts have been made to encourage German trade with

the African colonies, and it is shown that considerable
success has been attained in South-West Africa, where the
total value of goods imported from Germany amounted to
£244,187, as against £181,961 in the previous year, with an
appreciable falling-off in the value of imports from other
countries. In East Africa the greater part of the import trade
still comes from India and Zanzibar—about £450,000 worth of
goods out of the gross total of £592,630, having been imported
thence. The export trade is also largely carried on through
Zanzibar."
Great Britain, Parliamentary Publications

(Papers by Command: Miscellaneous Series,
Number 528, 1900, pages 3-5).
GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (August).

Defeat of the Rhine-Elbe Canal Bill.
Resentment of the Emperor.
An extraordinary edict.
Among several new canal projects in Germany, those of "the

Dortmund-Rhine Canal and the Great Midland Canal (joining from
the east to west the rivers Elbe, Weser, and Rhine) are the
most important. The first involves an expenditure of over
£8,000,000 altogether, and the second is variously estimated
at from £10,000,000 to £20,000,000, according to its eventual
scope. The latter is intended to amalgamate the eastern and
western waterways of the nation and to join the Dortmund-Ems
Canal to the Rhine system, in order to give the latter river
an outlet to the sea via a German port, instead of only
through ports in the Netherlands. It will also place the
Rhine-Main-Danube connection in direct communication with all
the streams of North Germany."
United States Bureau of Statistics,

Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance,
January, 1899.
The Rhine-Elbe canal project is one which the Emperor has

greatly at heart, and when, in August, 1899, a bill to promote
it was defeated in the Prussian Landtag by the Agrarians, who
feared that canal improvements would promote agricultural
competition, his resentment was expressed in an extraordinary
edict, which said: "The royal government, to its keen regret,
has been compelled to notice that a number of officials, whose
duty it is to support the policy of His Majesty the King, and to
execute and advance the measures of His Majesty's government,
are not sufficiently conscious of this obligation. … Such
conduct is opposed to all the traditions of the Prussian
administration, and cannot be tolerated." This was followed by
an extensive dismissal of officials, and excited strong
feeling against the government in a class which is nothing if
not loyal to the monarchy.
GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (November).

Railway concession in Asia Minor, to the Persian Gulf.

TURKEY: A. D. 1899 (NOVEMBER).

Re-arrangement of affairs in the Samoan Islands.
Partition of the islands with the United States.
Withdrawal of England, with compensations in the Tonga
and Solomon Islands and in Africa.

SAMOAN ISLANDS.
Military and naval expenditure.

WAR BUDGETS.
Naval strength.

NAVIES OF THE SEA POWERS.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (January).

Introduction of the Civil Code.
On the first day of the year 1900 a great revolution was
effected in the laws of Germany, by putting into operation the
new German Civil Code. "Since the close of the fifteenth
century Germany has been the land of documentary right. The
Roman judicial code was recognized as common law; while all
legal procedure distinctly native in its origin was confined
to certain districts and municipalities, and was, therefore,
entirely devoid of Imperial signification in the wider sense.
The Civil Code of the land was represented by the Corpus Juris
Civilis, a Latin work entirely incomprehensible to the layman.
{249}
This very remarkable circumstance can be accounted for only by
the weakness of mediæval German Imperialism. In England and
France royalty itself had, since the fourteenth century,
assumed control of the laws in order that a homogeneous
national code might be developed. German Imperialism of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, was incapable of
such a task. …
"An incessant conflict has been waging in Germany between the

Roman Law of the Empire and the native law as perpetuated in
the special enactments of the separate provinces and
municipalities. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
the preponderance of power lay with the Roman system, which
was further supported by the German science of jurisprudence—
a science identified exclusively with the common law of Rome.
Science looked upon the native systems of legal procedure as
irrational and barbarous; and as Roman judicature exercised
complete dominion over all legislation, the consequence was
that it steadily advanced, while native and local law was
gradually destroyed. Only within the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries has the native law of Germany been aroused to the
defence of its interests, … the signal for the attack upon
Roman Law being given by King Frederick William I, of Prussia.
As early as 1713 this monarch decreed that Roman law was to be
abrogated in his dominions, and replaced by the native law of
Prussia. The movement became general; and the era of modern
legal codes was ushered in. The legal code of Bavaria was
established in 1756; Prussia followed in 1794; France, in 1804
(Code Civil); Baden, in 1809; Austria, in 1811 (Das
Oesterreichische Buergerliche Gesetzbuch); and finally Saxony,
in 1863 (the designation here being similar to that adopted by
Austria). Everywhere the motto was the same; viz.,
'Emancipation from the Latin Code of Rome.' The native code
was to supplant the foreign, obscure, and obsolete Corpus
Juris. But the success of these newly established codes was
limited; each being applicable to its own particular province
only. Moreover, many of the German states had retained the
Roman law; confining their reforms to a few modifications. …
"The reestablishment of the German Empire was, therefore,

essential also to the reestablishment of German law. As early
as 1874 the initial steps for the incorporation of a new
German Civil Code had already been taken; and this work has
now at last been completed. On August 18, 1896, the new
system, together with a 'Law of Introduction,' was promulgated
by Emperor William II. It will become effective on January 1,
1900, a day which will ever be memorable as marking the climax
of a development of four centuries. At the close of the
fifteenth century Roman law was accepted in Germany; and now,
at the end of the nineteenth, this entire system is to be
completely abolished throughout the Empire. As a means of
education, and solely for this purpose, the Roman Code will be
retained in the universities. As a work of art it is immortal;
as a system of laws, perishable. The last relic of that grand
fabric of laws, which once dominated the whole world, crumbles
to-day. The national idea is victorious; and German law for
the German Empire is at last secured."
R. Sohm,
The Civil Code of Germany
(Forum, October, 1800).
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (January-March).
The outbreak of the "Boxers" in northern China.

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (JANUARY-MARCH).

Adhesion to the arrangement of an "open door" commercial
policy in China.

CHINA: A. D. 1890-1900 (SEPTEMBER-FEBRUARY).
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (February-June).

Increased naval programme.
With much difficulty, and as the result of strenuous pressure,

the Emperor succeeded in carrying through the Reichstag, in
June, a bill which doubles the programme of naval increase
adopted in 1898.

GERMANY: A. D. 1898 (April).
"After the way had been prepared by a speech of the Emperor to

the officers of the Berlin garrison on January 7, 1900, and by
a vigorous Press agitation, this project was brought before
the Reichstag on February 8. In form it was an amendment of
the Sexennate, or Navy Law of 1898, which had laid down a six
years' programme of naval construction. By the new measure
this programme was revised and extended over a period of 20
years. Instead of the double squadron of 10 battleships, with
its complement of cruisers and other craft, it was demanded
that the Government should be authorized to build two double
squadrons, or 38 battleships and the corresponding number of
cruisers. The Bill also provided for a large increase in the
number of ships to be employed in the protection of German
interests in foreign waters. The Centre party, both through
its speakers in the Reichstag and through its organs in the
Press, at first took up a very critical attitude towards the
Bill. Its spokesmen dwelt especially upon the breach of faith
involved in the extension of the programme of naval
construction so soon after the compromise of 1898 had been
accepted, and upon the difficulty of finding the money to pay
for a fleet of such magnitude. The Clerical leaders, however,
did not persist in their opposition, and finally agreed to
accept the main provisions of the Bill, with the exception of
the proposed increase in the number of ships employed in
foreign waters. They made it a condition that the Government
should incorporate with the Bill two financial projects
designed to provide the money required without burdening the
working classes. Both the Stamp Duties Bill and the Customs
Bill were adopted by the Government, and the Navy Bill was
carried with the aid of the Centre."
Berlin Correspondent, London Times.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (May).

The Lex Heinze.
The Socialists won a notable triumph in May, when they forced

the Reichstag to adopt their views in the shaping of a measure
known as the Lex Heinze. This Bill, as introduced by the
Government, gave the police increased powers in dealing with
immorality. The Clericals and the Conservatives sought to
extend its scope by amendments which were denounced by the
Radicals and Socialists as placing restrictions upon the
"liberty of art and literature." After a prolonged struggle,
in which the Socialists resorted to the use of obstruction,
the most obnoxious amendments were withdrawn.
{250}
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (May).

Passage of the Meat Inspection Bill.
A much discussed and sharply contested bill, providing for a

stringent inspection of imported meats, and aimed especially
at the obstructing of the American meat trade, was passed by
the Reichstag on the 23d of May. It prohibits the importation
of canned or sausage meat entirely, and imposes conditions on
the introduction of other meats which are thought to be, in
some cases, prohibitory. The measure was originally claimed to
be purely one of sanitary precaution. It "had been introduced
in the Reichstag early in 1899, but the sharp conflict of
interests about it kept it for more than a year in committee,
When the bill finally emerged for discussion in the Reichstag,
it was found that the Agrarian majority had distorted it from
a sanitary to a protective measure. Both in the new form they
gave the bill and in their discussions of it in the Reichstag,
the Agrarians showed that it was chiefly the exclusion of
foreign meats, rather than a system of sanitary inspection,
that they wanted. As finally passed in May the bill had lost
some of the harsh prohibitory features given it by the
Agrarians, the latter contenting themselves with the exclusion
of canned meats and sausages. To the foreign student of German
politics, the Meat Inspection Law is chiefly interesting as
illustrating the tendency of the general government to seize
upon functions which have hitherto been in the hands of the
individual states and municipalities, as well as of bringing
the private affairs of the people under the control of
governmental authority. It is another long step of the German
government away from the principle of 'laissez-faire.' The
task undertaken by the government here is itself a stupendous
one. There is certainly no other great government in the world
that would endeavor to organize the administrative machinery
for inspecting every pound of meat that comes upon the markets
of the country."
W. C. Dreher,
A Letter from Germany
(Atlantic Monthly, March, 1901).
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (June).

Opening of the Elbe and Trave Canal.
"The new Elbe and Trave Canal, which has been building five
years and has been completed at a cost of 24,500,000 marks
($5,831,000)—of which Prussia contributed 7,500,000 marks
($1,785,000) and the old Hansa town of Lübeck, which is now
reviving, 17,000,000 marks ($4,046,000)—was formally opened by
the German Emperor on the 16th [of June]. The length of the
new canal-which is the second to join the North Sea and the
Baltic, following the Kaiser Wilhelm Ship Canal, or Kiel
Canal, which was finished five years ago at a cost of
156,000,000 marks ($37,128,000)-is about 41 miles. The
available breadth of the new canal is 72 feet; breadth of the
lock gates, 46 feet; length of the locks, 87 yards; depth of
the locks, 8 feet 2 inches. The canal is crossed by
twenty-nine bridges, erected at a cost of $1,000,000. The span
of the bridges is in all cases not less than 30 yards and
their height above water level about 15 feet. There are seven
locks, five being between Lübeck and the Möllner See—the
highest point of the canal—and two between Möllner See and
Lauenburg-on-the-Elbe."
United States, Consular Reports,

September, 1900, page 8.
A memorandum by the British Charge d'Affaires in Berlin on the

Elbe-Trave Canal says that the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Canal injuriously affected the trade of Lübeck. This was
foreseen, and in 1894 a plan was sanctioned for the widening
of the existing canal, which only allowed of the passage of
vessels of about thirty tons. The direction of the old canal
was followed only to some extent, as it had immense curves,
while the new bed was fairly straight from Lübeck to
Lauenburg, on the Elbe above Hamburg. The memorandum states
that the undertaking is of great importance to the States
along the Elbe, as well as to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and
Russia. It will to some extent divert traffic from Hamburg,
and possibly reduce somewhat the revenue of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Canal.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (June-December).

Co-operation with the Powers in China.

CHINA.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (September).

Government loan placed in America.
Great excitement and indignation was caused in September by

the action of the imperial government in placing a loan of
80,000,000 marks (about $20,000,000) in the American money
market. On the meeting of the Reichstag, the finance minister,
Dr. von Miquel, replying to attacks upon this measure,
explained that in September the state of the German market was
such that if they had raised the 80,000,000 marks at home the
bank discount rate would have risen above the present rate of
5 per cent. before the end of the year. In the previous winter
the bank rate had been at 6 per cent, for a period of 90 days,
and during three weeks it had stood at 7 per cent. The
government had been strongly urged to do everything in its
power to prevent the recurrence of such high rates of
discount. The London rate was rapidly approaching the German,
and there was reason to fear that there would be a serious
flow of gold from Germany. It was therefore urgently desirable
to attract gold from abroad, and there was no country where money
was so easy at the time as in the United States. This was due
to the extraordinarily favorable balance of American trade and
the remarkable increase in exports out of all proportion to
the development of imports. Another reason was the American
Currency Law, which enabled the national banks to issue as
much as 100 per cent. of their capital in loans, whereas they
formerly issued only 90 per cent. There was no doubt that the
80,000,000 marks could have been obtained in Germany, but the
public must have been aware that other loans of much greater
extent were impending. There was going to be a loan of about
150,000,000 marks for the expedition to China, and it was
certain that before the end of the year 1901 considerable
demands would be made upon the public.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (September).

Proposal to require leaders of the Chinese attack
on foreigners to be given up.

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (October).

Anglo-German agreement concerning policy in China.

CHINA: A. D. 1900 (AUGUST-DECEMBER).
{251}
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (October 9).

Lèse-majesté in criticism of the Emperor's speech to soldiers
departing for China, enjoining no quarter and commending the
Huns as a military example.
Increasing prosecutions for Lèse-majesté.
On the 9th of October, a newspaper correspondent wrote from

Berlin: "The Berlin newspapers of yesterday and to-day
chronicle no fewer than five trials for 'lèse-majesté.' The
most important case was that of Herr Maximilian Harden, the
editor of the weekly magazine 'Zukunft.' Herr Harden, who
enjoyed the confidence of the late Prince Bismarck, wields a
very satirical pen, and has been designated 'The Junius of
modern Germany.' In 1898 Herr Harden was convicted of
lèse-majesté and was sentenced to six months' incarceration in
a fortress. In the present instance he was accused of having
committed lèse-majesté in an article, 'The Fight with the
Dragon,' published in the 'Zukunft' of August 11. The article
dealt with the speech delivered by the Emperor at Bremerhaven
on July 27, 'the telegraphic transmission of which, as was
asserted at the time, had been forbidden by Count von Bülow.'
The article noted as a fact that the Emperor had commanded the
troops who were leaving for China to give no quarter and to
make no prisoners, but, imitating the example of Attila and
the Huns, to excite a terror in East Asia which would last for
a thousand years. The Emperor had added, 'May the blessing of
God attend your flags and may this war have the blessed
result that Christianity shall make its way into China.' Herr
Harden in his comments on this speech had critically examined
the deeds of the historic Attila and had contrasted him with
the Attila of popular story in order to demonstrate that he
was not a proper model to set up for the imitation of German
soldiers. The article in the 'Zukunft' had also maintained
that it was not the mission of the German Empire to spread
Christianity in China, and, finally, had described a war of
revenge as a mistake." No publicity was allowed to be given to
the proceedings of the trial. "Herr Harden was found guilty
not only of having been wanting in the respect due to the
Emperor but of having actually attacked his Majesty in a way
that constituted lèse-majesté. The Court sentenced him to six
months' incarceration in a fortress and at the same time
directed that the incriminated number of the 'Zukunft' should
be destroyed.
"The 'Vossische Zeitung' remarks:—'We read in the newspapers

to-day that a street porter in Marburg has been sentenced to
six months' imprisonment for insulting the Empress, that in
Hamburg a workman has been sentenced to five months'
imprisonment for lèse-majesté, that in Beuthen a workman has
been sentenced to a year's imprisonment for lèse-majesté, and
that in Dusseldorf a man who is deaf and dumb has been
sentenced to four months' imprisonment for the same offence.
The prosecutions for lèse-majesté are multiplying at an
alarming rate. We must emphatically repeat that such
proceedings appear to us to be in the last degree unsuited to
promote the principles of Monarchy. … The greater the number
of political prosecutions that are instituted the more
accustomed, under force of circumstances, does the Press
become to the practice of writing so that the reader may read
between the lines. And this attitude is to the advantage
neither of public morals nor of the Throne. … We regret in
particular that the case of yesterday (that of Herr Harden)
was tried 'in camera.' … It has justly been said that
publicity is more indispensable in political trials than in
prosecutions against thieves and murderers. … If there is no
prospect of an improvement in this respect the Reichstag will
have to devote its serious attention to the question how the
present administration of justice is to be dealt with, not
only in the interest of freedom of speech and of the Press,
but also for the good of the Crown and the well-being of the
State.'"
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (October 18).

Change in the Imperial Chancellorship.
On the 18th of October it was announced in the "Imperial

Gazette" that" His Majesty the Emperor and King has been
graciously pleased to accede to the request of the Imperial
Chancellor, the President of the Ministry and Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Prince of
Ratibor and Corvey, to be relieved of his offices, and has at
the same time conferred upon him the high Order of the Black
Eagle with brilliants. His Majesty has further been graciously
pleased to appoint Count von Bülow, Minister of State and
Secretary of State to the Foreign Office, to be Imperial
Chancellor and Minister for Foreign Affairs." Count von Bülow
is the third of the successors of Prince Bismarck in the high
office of the Imperial Chancellor. The latter was followed by
Count von Caprivi, who gave way to Prince Hohenlohe in 1894.
Prince Hohenlohe had nearly reached the age of 82 when he is
said to have asked leave to retire from public life.

Withdrawal of legal tender silver coins.
"Germany has lately taken a step to clear off the haze from
her financial horizon by calling in the outstanding thalers
which are full legal tender, and turning them into subsidiary
coins of limited legal tender—a process which will extend
over ten years. At the end of that time, if no misfortune
intervenes, she will be on the gold standard as surely and
safely as England is. Her banks can now tender silver to their
customers when they ask for gold, as the Bank of France can
and does occasionally. When this last measure is carried into
effect the only full legal-tender money in Germany will be
gold, or Government notes redeemable in gold."
New York Nation,

November 29, 1900.
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (November-December).

The Reichstag and the Kaiser.
His speeches and his system of personal government.
In the Reichstag, which reassembled on the 14th of November,

"the speeches of the Kaiser were discussed by men of all
parties, with a freedom that was new and refreshing in German
political debates. Apart from the Kaiser's speeches in
connection with the Chinese troubles, the debates brought out
some frank complaints from the more 'loyal' sections of German
politics, that the Kaiser is surrounded by advisers who
systematically misinform him as to the actual state of public
opinion. It has long been felt, and particularly during the
past few years, that the present system of two cabinets—one of
which is nominally responsible to the Reichstag and public
opinion, while the other is merely a personal cabinet,
responsible to neither, and yet exercising an enormous
influence in shaping the monarch's policies—has been growing
more and more intolerable. This system of personal government
is becoming the subject of chronic disquietude in Germany, and
even the more loyal section of the press is growing restive
under it. Bismarck's wise maxim, 'A monarch should appear in
public only when attired in the clothing of a responsible
ministry,' is finding more and more supporters among
intelligent Germans."
W. C. Dreher,
{252}
GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (December).

Census of the Empire.
Growth of Berlin and other cities.
Urban population compared with that in the United States.
A despatch from Berlin, February 26, announced the results of

the census of December, 1900, made public that day. The
population of the German Empire is shown to have increased
from 52,279,901 in 1895 to 56,345,014. Of this population
27,731,067 are males and 28,613,947 females. Over 83 per cent.
of the whole population is contained in the four kingdoms; of
these Prussia comes first with (in round figures) 34,500,000
inhabitants, and Bavaria second with 6,200,000. The figures
for Saxony and Würtemberg are 4,200,000 and 2,300,000
respectively. More than 16 per cent. of the population is
resident in the 33 towns of over 100,000 inhabitants. Of these
33 towns the largest is Berlin, while the smallest is Cassel,
of which the inhabitants number 106,001.
The Prussian Statistical Office had already published the
results of the census, so far as they concern Berlin and its
suburbs. It appears that the population of the German capital
now amounts to 1,884,151 souls, as against 1,677,304 in 1895
and 826,3!1 in 1871. The population of the suburbs has
increased from 57,735 in 1871 and 435,236 in 1895, to 639,310
in 1900. The total population of the capital, including the
suburbs, is given as 2,523,461 souls, as against 2,112,540 in
1895, an increase of over 19 per cent. Some figures relating
to other cities had previously appeared, going to show "an
acceleration of the movement of population from the country
toward the great cities. The growth of the urban population in
five years has been astonishing. The population of Berlin, for
example, increased more than twice as much in the last five
years as in the preceding five. The fourteen German cities now
having a population of above 200,000 have increased more than
17 per cent since 1895. … No other European capital is growing
so fast in wealth and numbers as Berlin; and the city is rapidly
assuming a dominant position in all spheres of German life."
W. C. Dreher,
The percentage of growth in Berlin "has been far outstripped

by many other cities, especially by Nuremberg; and so far as
our own census shows, no American city of over 50,000
inhabitants can match its increase. In five years it has grown
from 162,000 to 261,000—60 per cent increase. That would mean
120 per cent in a decade.
"But though Germany has only one city of more than one
million, and one more of more than half a million, and the
United States has three of each class, Germany has, in
proportion to its population rather more cities of from 50,000
to 100,000 inhabitants, and decidedly more of from 100,000 to
500,000, than the United States. In the United States
8,000,000 people live in cities of over 500,000 inhabitants,
against some 3,000,000 in Germany; yet in the United States a
larger percentage of the population lives in places which have
under 50,000 inhabitants."
The World's Work,

March, 1901.

Celebration of the Prussian Bicentenary.

PRUSSIA: A. D. 1901.

Promised increase of protective duties.
In the Reichstag—the Parliament of the Empire—on the 26th of

January, the Agrarians brought in a resolution demanding that
the Prussian Government should "in the most resolute manner"
use its influence to secure a "considerable increase" in the
protective duties on agricultural produce at the approaching
revision of German commercial policy, and should take steps to
get the new Tariff Bill laid before the Reichstag as promptly
as possible. In response, the Imperial Chancellor, Count von
Bülow, made the following declaration of the policy of the
government, for which all parties had been anxiously waiting:
"Fully recognizing the difficult situation in which
agriculture is placed, and inspired by the desire effectively
to improve that situation, the Prussian Government is resolved
to exert its influence in order to obtain adequate protection
for agricultural produce by means of the Customs duties, which
must be raised to an extent calculated to attain that object."

The Prussian Canal scheme enlarged.

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Future politics : living together in a

world transformed by tech First Edition.

Tomorrow's lawyers : an introduction to your future

Strangers in a strange land living the Catholic faith

Making Eden: how plants transformed a barren planet

Understanding Institutions The Science and Philosophy

The Global Engineers : Building a Safe and Equitable

Medium a step by step guide to communicating with the

Living Ethically In an Interconnected World 1st Edition

Together By Fate Jon Silva Book 1 1st Edition Kylar

This book is dedicated to my parents,

Suzanne Ashman, James Boyle, Lizzie Gaisman, Nicholas Gaisman,

COPY RIGHT NOTIFIC ATIONS

Chapter 2 epigraph: From Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford

Chapter 4 epigraph: From Wind, Sand, & Stars, Antoine de Saint-

Chapter 7 epigraph: From Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

Chapter 9 epigraph: From Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford

Chapter 16 epigraph: From Tragic Choices: the Conflicts Society Confronts

PART I THE DIGITAL LIFEWORLD

PART II FUTURE POWER

PART III FUTURE LIBERTY

PART IV FUTURE DEMOCRACY

PART V FUTURE JUSTICE

PART VI FUTURE POLITICS

‘A new political science is needed for a world itself quite

Politics in the twentieth century was dominated by a central

shameful, sinful, or wrong. Still other technologies will filter what we

The Next Great Change

We already live in a time of deep political unease. Every day

and despised. Two recent exercises in mass democracy in the

digital t­echnology are occurring exponentially, the rate of change

always brought to powerful politicians. Technology affects us not

Consider the following passage:

These are not the words of a politician.They’re from the voiceover

matter that will take care of itself.’5 There is something attractive

The first is from Karl Marx’s 1845 Theses on Feuerbach.6 It served

of a transistor. We need an intellectual framework that can help

The Promise of Political Theory

The purpose of philosophy, says Isaiah Berlin, is always the same: to

To my mind, the best thing about political theory is that it

Power: How the strong dominate the weak

In a time of great change, I suggest, it pays to go back to first

Some things seem unsayable, or unthinkable, because the common

Why I Wrote this Book

My first real taste of political theory was as at university, where

Orwell, Huxley, Wells—all novelists from the early twentieth cen-

The Politics of Technology

New technologies make it possible to do things that previously

"German economists are not exaggerating when they say this

United States Consular Reports,

A report presented to the Reichstag showed the total number of

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (February).

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (February).

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (May-July).

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (May-August).

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1899 (June).

"The number of Europeans resident in the German African

"Great efforts have been made to encourage German trade with

Great Britain, Parliamentary Publications

digital technology are occurring exponentially, the rate of change