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campaign simply made better use of its data-management resources than
did the opposition. What is striking, however, is how little this has to do
with practicing democracy, with civic participation, or with activism at
any level. In place of democracy, including anything envisioned in the
Cybersyn project, we have population management and control.
The second example comes from Great Britain, where Prime Minister
David Cameron, a big fan of the iPad and especially the game Fruit Ninja,
ordered the creation of an app that would enable him and his inner circle
to monitor the British economy. Dubbed No. 10 Dashboard, according
to the website of the government's cabinet ofice, it provides a summary
view of national and international information, including housing and
employment data and stock prices, as well as data on the performance of
government departments. In addition, there is “political context” data
drawn from polls, commentary, and a sampling from Twitter. Proud of
the app, the prime minister showed it off to newly reelected President
Obama at a G8 summit meeting.
It would be easy to draw the conclusion that with Obama's use of the
largest cloud-computing company and Cameron's No. 10 Dashboard,
we are now light years ahead of Chile's Cybersyn. After all, rooms full of
1970s equipment and software can now it on a handheld device. But on
closer inspection, something substantial has also been lost. The fruits of
Cybersyn were to be shared with the entire nation in a transparent process
of data production, modeling, display, and distribution. The goal was to
advance the Chilean national economy even as it promoted democracy in
the workplace and in society. Cameron's app, like Obama's use of AWS,
is intended to better manage a population. Neither has much to do with
public participation in political decision making. Responding to just this
type of criticism, the data director of Obama's campaign felt compelled to
declare, “I am not Big Brother.” He insisted that “campaigns don't know
any more about your online behavior than any retailer, news outlet or
savvy blogger” (Roeder 2012). Although it is more than a bit disingenu-
ous to compare a campaign organization that spent over $11 million on
technology services with the resources of a savvy blogger, it is accurate to
compare what both campaigns knew about online and ofline behavior
with what Walmart, Target, or any other large, global retailer knows (Gal-
lagher 2012). But what kind of defense is it to maintain that a presidential
campaign is no worse than a giant retailer like Walmart when it comes to
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