Election

Our elections are a hang over from the previous era when information moved at the speed of horses, not the speed of light. They're broken, corrupted, and starting to look kind of ridiculous in an age of instant everything—like a horse and buggy parked next to a Tesla. But our electronic culture is still too immature and volatile to offer any real alternatives. And so we're at a strange crossroads ...

The algorithms that power Facebook’s Like button are infinitely more sophisticated than the voting system we use to elect our governments. Why should our role as citizens be limited to a multiple choice question every few years when we literally have the technology at our fingertips for everyone to participate directly in the decisions that govern them?

But who in their right mind would want to replace our broken governments with an elaborate system of Like buttons now that we know how easy it is to turn a crowd of citizens armed with smartphones into a righteous, ignorant, medieval mob?