TREK TECH (and your vote)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 07:59:29 -0800
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: [IP] TREK TECH (and your vote)
To: dave () farber net

Dave,

There's another interesting parallel between "Star Trek" and reality, or at
least a potential future reality, that is rarely mentioned -- the lack of
meaningful elections.  Think about it -- for all its vaunted "philosophy,"
the observer is hard-pressed to find any references to democratic principles
such as elections of any kind in the shows.  An apparently benign
interstellar government just seems to exist by magic.  This interesting
"gap" in the Trek philosophy appeared obvious years ago when I was helping
Joel Engel with his Gene Roddenberry biography (I was a source due to my
involvement in the production of the first Trek film).

Thanks to touch-screen and other electronic voting machines with their many
fundamental problems and vulnerabilities, and the push for something even
worse -- Internet voting -- we may soon have elections that are more hi-tech
glitz than an accurate representation of voters' choices.  And then we too
may find ourselves with a "government by magic" -- though it likely won't be
as benign as in Gene's imagination.

By the way, for the night owls in the readership, I'll be back on "Coast to
Coast AM" for several hours late tonight/early tomorrow morning, talking
about this (voting machines, not Star Trek) among other topics.  Station
lists are at:  http://www.coasttocoastam.com/info/wheretolisten.html along
with other info.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () privacyforum org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, Fact Squad - http://www.factsquad.org
Co-Founder, URIICA - Union for Representative International Internet
                     Cooperation and Analysis - http://www.uriica.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy

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