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"I think engineering will supply our demand for a "spiritual" life after meat death."
- Bart Kosko
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| Electronic Voting | ||
| A system of elections that used the responses of a statistically average voter. |
This if the first use of this phrase in science fiction, and it's not quite what you think.
Norman Muller, ordinary clerk of a small department store in Bloomington, Indiana, would exercise the franchise based on his responses to a computer's questions.
“Multivac already has most of the information it needs to decide all the elections, national, state and local. It needs only to check certain imponderable attitudes of mind and it will use you for that. We can’t predict what questions it will ask, but they may not make much sense to you, or even to us. It may ask you how you feel about garbage-disposal in your town; whether you favor central incinerators. It might ask you whether you have a doctor of your own or whether you make use of National Medicine, Inc.
| In this imperfect world, the sovereign citizens of the first and greatest Electronic Democracy had, through Norman Muller (through him! ) exercised once again its free, untrammeled franchise. |
| Technovelgy from Franchise,
by Isaac Asimov. Published by If: Worlds of Science Fiction in 1955 Additional resources -
|
Compare to electronic government from Shockwave Rider (1975) by John Brunner.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
