But they key move was the first one made, and it’s no wonder that it caught on. It was so terribly attractive to, it solved so many problems for and soothed the anxieties of, so many important people.
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Then the 2008 financial crisis happened, followed by a long period of recession and austerity, and suddenly it turned out that the technocratic consensus wasn’t as competent or moderate as it had appeared. Ten to twenty per cent of the electorate suddenly realized that they might have to take an interest in politics after all. So they started paying attention again, and they didn’t have the basic assumptions of the mainstream. All they knew was that the people who used to be in charge seemed to have screwed things up mightily.
The ability to translate information into action is the last piece of the puzzle, but it might have been the first piece because it’s so crucial.
*The publication of Eden Medina’s Cybernetic Revolutionaries, a very good history of the project, has helped in recent years.
Governments were also subject to the same cognitive pressures of a world that was becoming more complicated, so they also needed solutions to attenuate information.
James didn’t worry. What greater purpose could these people find? And with so many minds applied, the pace of improvements to the machine was accelerating into another order of magnitude. He wasn’t having to shove things forward any more; the company was moving of its own accord.