Every government is a machine, and every machine has its tinkerers — and its jams. From the start, machines have driven American democracy and, just as often, crippled it. The printing press, the telegraph, the radio, the television, the mainframe, cable TV, the internet: Each had wild-eyed boosters who promised that a machine could hold the republic together, or make it more efficient, or repair the damage caused by the last machine. Each time, this assertion would be both right and terribly wrong. …
The United States was founded as a political experiment; it seemed natural that it should advance and grow through technological experiment. …
By 1959, a team of Democratic strategists was developing a secret plan known as Project Macroscope. They wanted to build a machine that could predict voter responses to any conceivable issue or candidate, a Univac for politics. Newton Minow, an Adlai Stevenson campaign adviser who would soon become chairman of the F.C.C., wrote to the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “My own opinion is that such a thing (a) cannot work, (b) is immoral, (c) should be declared illegal.” Project Macroscope went ahead anyway. We live, each minute of every day, within its clockwork, and under its giant, all-seeing eye. CONT.
Jill Lepore (Harvard), New York Times