by Kenan Malik on (#6K7PQ)
Moguls extol the fruits of artificial intelligence, but seek to hide its science from public viewIn 1914, on the eve of the First World War, HG Wells published a novel about the possibilities of an even greater conflagration. The World Set Free imagines, 30 years before the Manhattan Project, the creation of atomic weapons that allow a man [to] carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city". Global war breaks out, leading to an atomic apocalypse. It takes the establishment of a world government" to bring about peace.What concerned Wells was not simply the perils of a new technology, it was also the dangers of democracy. Wells' world government was not created through democratic will but imposed as a benign dictatorship. The governed will show their consent by silence," England's King Egbert menacingly remarks. For Wells, the common man" was a violent fool in social and public affairs". Only an educated, scientifically minded elite could save democracy from itself". Continue reading...