Numerical indicators, gauges, kilometre limits, bed occupancy rates… Our public authorities like to take cover behind a barricade of numbers – but is its only purpose to pull the wool over our eyes?
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection focuses on China today, its uses of digital technologies to govern, and the political theories developed by its intellectuals.
Uber, Waze, Airbnb… The algorithms that control these platforms are based on an optimisation of the service provided to the user rather than any collective, political or moral norms. The accusations against these algorithms expose the way technical architectures implicitly govern our lives.
It has taken only a few decades for so-called “natural” disasters to become a major concern for international professionals. A long, on-the-ground study reveals the concrete ways in which environmental disasters are managed, from UN officials to affected countries.
The economic crisis that has plagued a great part of the world since 2008 remains baffling as ever, all questions and no answers. Why not start by listing the former, and then imagine what the latter could look like?
Thirty years of misguided deregulation have brought us the 2008 collapse. Two books look at how we should create new rules democratically. While adopting widely different perspectives, both beg the same question: can rulemaking alone ensure the wellbeing of people in a global society?
At the London G20 Summit, hosted by Gordon Brown, the leaders of the major new “great powers”, China, India and Brazil, will be prominent. What can be expected from this meeting? The G20 will only fill the vacuum at the centre if it addresses the broader systemic crisis of responsibility and accountability that arises out of the West’s worship of the free market.
