Who tailored this election for us?
Social networks, AI and the battle for attention shape the environment in which we vote. A personal reflection on technology, fear and the difficulty of working together after Israel’s election.
So Israel's election is over. The former coalition, the opposition and the Arab parties have so little appetite for working together that there is no obvious way forward.
The media is packed with political and sociological analysis. I'd only like to raise one wearily familiar point: the enormous part technology has played in this magnificent, if temporary, finale.
Put social networks and AI together with celebrities and media outlets hungry for attention and ratings, and the result is an overwhelming effect on the mind and soul of the human voter, neither of which has changed much since we lived in caves. So much information, opinion, emotion and dopamine makes it hard to tell authentic information from partial, misleading or manipulative information. So we retreat into the fear and insularity we know so well and trust. "We won’t join a coalition with them."
I'm not here to talk about "what needs to be done". I'd simply like us to look at the set-up that has been tailored for us, and at how it works inside a divided, fractured country, struck by loss and fear.
It isn't our fault that, with so many means of communication, we can no longer communicate. Or that all this sophistication and technology has taken us back to the jungle. Today's leaders hold extraordinary power to do good for their citizens, yet they compete, with no restraint at all, to do each other in.
