Technology is taking over the state. Not just government, but the state: the vast, many-tentacled system of power and governance in which we all live, in which we all have to live.
It’s already happening in healthcare, education, infrastructure, energy, policing, in ballot boxes, in courts, and on our streets – and of course it’s being largely driven by the big Silicon Valley firms that monopolise digital technology. So, what happens if they become a replacement for the state?
To discuss this question, I’m joined by Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the Innovation Group at J. Walter Thompson, and author of the forthcoming book Silicon States, and Dominic Campbell, founder and director of the influential government consultancy FutureGov.
Here are some highlights, lightly edited for clarity.
Silicon Valley's civic ambitions. A lot of the time it involves flattening everything and building it from the ground up – Sidewalk Labs is building a city "from the internet up" – which is kind of unnuanced and largely theoretical. They're not perfecting or optimising or working with what is there, which is a reflection of how binary Silicon Valley is.
Favourite civic innovations. I spent a lot of time in San Francisco looking at some of the new education models: Udacity and Minerva, for example. Historically governments have done massive overhauls of the way we learn to sit with future industries, and this time they just haven't. These startups are thinking in the future a lot more dynamically.
The reality of local government. At the moment the overarching nature of it is techno-ignorance above all else. It's not that they're not interested. It's not that their some of the smartest people that I hang out with. It's really just they don't know what they don't know. They only ever see the bright brochures of the corporates that pass over their desks.
**Government Digital Service.**It is in crisis. They are going to come through and be whatever they be as a result. But I think whatever happens they could probably shut tomorrow and momentum is largely with government now, certainly in central government.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
