<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:x-small"><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-end-of-a-world-of-nation-states-may-be-upon-us">https://aeon.co/essays/the-end-of-a-world-of-nation-states-may-be-upon-us</a></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:x-small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:x-small">Nation-states are unlikely to collapse overnight. There are no
barbarians at the gate. Even Rome did not collapse in a day. But it
evolved during a time of industrialisation, centralised ‘command and
control’ bureaucracies and national loyalty. Modern technology tends in
the opposite direction: it’s distributed, decentralised and
uncontrollable. If our political arrangements are a mirror of the modes
of production and assumptions of the time, the future doesn’t look rosy
for this 19th-century relic. It looks far brighter for the modern,
connected, agile city, whether that’s on land, on borders, or out in the
ocean. And anyway: doesn’t it pay to have some experiments going on,
just in case?</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 10:48 AM, anyega jefferson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jeffersonanyega@gmail.com" target="_blank">jeffersonanyega@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:x-small"><br clear="all"></div><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/?utm_source=atltw" target="_blank">https://www.theatlantic.com/<wbr>technology/archive/2017/10/<wbr>what-facebook-did/542502/?utm_<wbr>source=atltw</a><br><br><br><p>We’ve known since at least 2012 that Facebook was a powerful,
non-neutral force in electoral politics. In that year, a combined
University of California, San Diego and Facebook research team led by
James Fowler published <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11421.epdf?referrer_access_token=3hEGlbqHkEuGY21mtWU9ytRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O-9kUewX3bdNdtBQCWYxxxyT1mLWjysh846djISzhdVQ8te60SwiEQkr8UOR_w6foAEMGP1agrQAR91rzU45X9hd7s6U3lIzEIbd35aX7ruNgD1yER8FcGDfCZKhbg6O9VCsEgb3kEZAqVvcbtCbcEZFbuSfvBx75f4RZqlS8DhyQ4yVH7PQ2vxssZZOlc6z5EWL8qXh-xIkjAG_gl0XMoATarImt_N_loxzfUHP134AZ9TGXojQKJCt64RPRMU58%3D&tracking_referrer=www.theatlantic.com" target="_blank">a study in <em>Nature</em></a>,
which argued that Facebook’s “I Voted” button had driven a small but
measurable increase in turnout, primarily among young people.</p><p>Rebecca Rosen’s 2012 story, “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/did-facebook-give-democrats-the-upper-hand/264937/" target="_blank">Did Facebook Give Democrats the Upper Hand?</a>”
relied on new research from Fowler, et al., about the presidential
election that year. Again, the conclusion of their work was that
Facebook’s get-out-the-vote message could have driven a substantial
chunk of the increase in youth voter participation in the 2012 general
election. Fowler told Rosen that it was “even possible that Facebook is
completely responsible” for the youth voter increase. And because a
higher proportion of young people vote Democratic than the general
population, the net effect of Facebook’s GOTV effort would have been to
help the Dems.</p><p><br></p><p>The research showed that a small design change by Facebook could have
electoral repercussions, especially with America’s electoral-college
format in which a few hotly contested states have a disproportionate
impact on the national outcome. And the pro-liberal effect it implied
became enshrined as an axiom of how campaign staffers, reporters, and
academics viewed social media.</p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>-- <br><div class="m_6381623634720422641gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Anyega M Jefferson<br><br></div><div><a href="mailto:jeffersonanyega@gmail.com" target="_blank">jeffersonanyega@gmail.com</a><br><br>0703824326<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br>Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.<br><br></div></div></div></div>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Anyega M Jefferson<br><br></div><div><a href="mailto:jeffersonanyega@gmail.com" target="_blank">jeffersonanyega@gmail.com</a><br><br>0703824326<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br>Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.<br><br></div></div></div></div>
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