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;ompared with the impressive police gear of today – automatic numberplate recognition, ;;TE cameras, ! S trac"ers – #peration ;orral loo"s<uaint. +nd the possibilities for control will only e:pand. uropeanofficials have considered re<uiring all cars entering the uropean mar"et tofeature a built-in mechanism that allows the police to stop vehiclesremotely. Spea"ing earlier this year, 1im $arley, a senior $ord e:ecutive,ac"nowledged that Fwe "now everyone who brea"s the law, we "now whenyou're doing it. =e have ! S in your car, so we "now what you're doing.By the way, we don't supply that data to anyone.F That last bit didn't soundvery reassuring and $arley retracted his remar"s.

+s both cars and roads get Fsmart,F they promise nearly perfect, real-timelaw enforcement. nstead of waiting for drivers to brea" the law, authoritiescan simply prevent the crime. Thus, a 63-mile stretch of the +/4 between$eli:stowe and >ugby is to be e<uipped with numerous sensors that wouldmonitor traffic by sending signals to and from mobile phones in movingvehicles. The telecoms watchdog #fcom envisions that such smart roadsconnected to a centrally controlled traffic system could automaticallyimpose variable speed limits to smooth the flow of traffic but also direct thecars Falong diverted routes to avoid the congestion and even GmanageHtheir speedF.#ther gadgets – from smartphones to smart glasses – promise even moresecurity and safety. n +pril, +pple patented technology that deployssensors inside the smartphone to analy e if the car is moving and if the

person using the phone is drivingI if both conditions are met, it simplybloc"s the phone's te:ting feature. ntel and $ord are wor"ing on roDect%obil – a face recognition system that, should it fail to recogni e the face of the driver, would not only prevent the car being started but also send thepicture to the car's owner bad news for teenagersC.The car is emblematic of transformations in many other domains, fromsmart environments for F ambient assisted living F where carpets andwalls detect that someone has fallen, to various masterplans for the smartcity, where municipal services dispatch resources only to those areas thatneed them. Than"s to sensors and internet connectivity, the most banaleveryday obDects have ac<uired tremendous power to regulate behavior.ven public toilets are ripe for sensor-based optimi ation( the Safeguard!erm +larm, a smart soap dispenser developed by rocter J !amble andused in some public =;s in the hilippines, has sensors monitoring thedoors of each stall. #nce you leave the stall, the alarm starts ringing – andcan only be stopped by a push of the soap-dispensing button.

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n his essay, #'>eilly draws broader philosophical lessons from suchtechnologies, arguing that they wor" because they rely on Fa deepunderstanding of the desired outcomeF spam is badKC and periodicallychec" if the algorithms are actually wor"ing as e:pected are too manylegitimate emails ending up mar"ed as spam C.

#'>eilly presents such technologies as novel and uni<ue – we are livingthrough a digital revolution after all – but the principle behind FalgorithmicregulationF would be familiar to the founders of cybernetics – a disciplinethat, even in its name it means Fthe science of governanceFC hints at itsgreat regulatory ambitions. This principle, which allows the system tomaintain its stability by constantly learning and adapting itself to thechanging circumstances, is what the British psychiatrist >oss +shby , one of the founding fathers of cybernetics, called FultrastabilityF.

To illustrate it, +shby designed the homeostat. This clever device consistedof four interconnected >+$ bomb control units – mysterious loo"ing blac"bo:es with lots of "nobs and switches – that were sensitive to voltagefluctuations. f one unit stopped wor"ing properly – say, because of anune:pected e:ternal disturbance – the other three would rewire andregroup themselves, compensating for its malfunction and "eeping thesystem's overall output stable.

+shby's homeostat achieved FultrastabilityF by always monitoring its internalstate and cleverly redeploying its spare resources.

?i"e the spam filter, it didn't have to specify all the possible disturbances –only the conditions for how and when it must be updated and redesigned.This is no trivial departure from how the usual technical systems, with theirrigid, if-then rules, operate( suddenly, there's no need to developprocedures for governing every contingency, for – or so one hopes –algorithms and real-time, immediate feedbac" can do a better Dob thaninfle:ible rules out of touch with reality.

+lgorithmic regulation could certainly ma"e the administration of e:istinglaws more efficient. f it can fight credit-card fraud, why not ta: fraudtalian bureaucrats have e:perimented with the redditometro , or incomemeter, a tool for comparing people's spending patterns – recorded than"sto an arcane talian law – with their declared income, so that authorities"now when you spend more than you earn. Spain has e:pressed interest ina similar tool.

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Such systems, however, are toothless against the real culprits of ta:evasion – the super-rich families who profit from various offshoringschemes or simply write outrageous ta: e:emptions into the law.

+lgorithmic regulation is perfect for enforcing the austerity agenda whileleaving those responsible for the fiscal crisis off the hoo". To understandwhether such systems are wor"ing as e:pected, we need to modify#'>eilly's <uestion( for whom are they wor"ing f it's Dust the ta:-evadingplutocrats, the global financial institutions interested in balanced nationalbudgets and the companies developing income-trac"ing software, then it'shardly a democratic success.

=ith his belief that algorithmic regulation is based on Fa deepunderstanding of the desired outcomeF, #'>eilly cunningly disconnects themeans of doing politics from its ends. But the how of politics is as important

as the what of politics – in fact, the former often shapes the latter.verybody agrees that education, health, and security are all FdesiredoutcomesF, but how do we achieve them n the past, when we faced thestar" political choice of delivering them through the mar"et or the state, thelines of the ideological debate were clear. Today, when the presumedchoice is between the digital and the analog or between the dynamicfeedbac" and the static law, that ideological clarity is gone – as if the verychoice of how to achieve those Fdesired outcomesF was apolitical and didn'tforce us to choose between different and often incompatible visions ofcommunal living.

By assuming that the utopian world of infinite feedbac" loops is so efficientthat it transcends politics, the proponents of algorithmic regulation fall intothe same trap as the technocrats of the past. 9es, these systems areterrifyingly efficient – in the same way that Singapore is terrifyingly efficient#'>eilly, unsurprisingly, praises Singapore for its embrace of algorithmicregulationC. +nd while Singapore's leaders might believe that they, too,have transcended politics, it doesn't mean that their regime cannot beassessed outside the linguistic swamp of efficiency and innovation – byusing political, not economic benchmar"s.

+s Silicon Ealley "eeps corrupting our language with its endlessglorification of disruption and efficiency – concepts at odds with thevocabulary of democracy – our ability to <uestion the FhowF of politics iswea"ened. Silicon Ealley's default answer to the how of politics is what call solutionism( problems are to be dealt with via apps, sensors, andfeedbac" loops – all provided by startups. arlier this year !oogle's ric

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Schmidt even promised that startups would provide the solution to theproblem of economic ine<uality( the latter, it seems, can also beFdisruptedF. +nd where the innovators and the disruptors lead, thebureaucrats follow.

The intelligence services embraced solutionism before other governmentagencies. Thus, they reduced the topic of terrorism from a subDect that hadsome connection to history and foreign policy to an informational problemof identifying emerging terrorist threats via constant surveillance. Theyurged citi ens to accept that instability is part of the game, that its rootcauses are neither traceable nor reparable, that the threat can only be pre-empted by out-innovating and out-surveilling the enemy with bettercommunications.

Spea"ing in +thens last )ovember, the talian philosopher !iorgio +gamben discussed an epochal transformation in the idea of government,Fwhereby the traditional hierarchical relation between causes and effects isinverted, so that, instead of governing the causes – a difficult ande:pensive underta"ing – governments simply try to govern the effectsF.

$or +gamben, this shift is emblematic of modernity. t also e:plains why theliberali ation of the economy can co-e:ist with the growing proliferation ofcontrol – by means of soap dispensers and remotely managed cars – intoeveryday life. F f government aims for the effects and not the causes, it willbe obliged to e:tend and multiply control. ;auses demand to be "nown,while effects can only be chec"ed and controlled.F +lgorithmic regulation isan enactment of this political programme in technological form.

The true politics of algorithmic regulation become visible once its logic isapplied to the social nets of the welfare state. There are no calls todismantle them, but citi ens are nonetheless encouraged to ta"eresponsibility for their own health. ;onsider how $red =ilson, an influentialUS venture capitalist, frames the subDect. FLealthM is the opposite side ofhealthcare,F he said at a conference in aris last Necember. F t's what"eeps you out of the healthcare system in the first place.F Thus, we areinvited to start using self-trac"ing apps and data-sharing platforms andmonitor our vital indicators, symptoms and discrepancies on our own.This goes nicely with recent policy proposals to save troubled publicservices by encouraging healthier lifestyles. ;onsider a 23/7 report by=estminster council and the ?ocal !overnment nformation Unit, athin"tan", calling for the lin"ing of housing and council benefits to claimants'

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visits to the gym – with the help of smartcards. They might not be needed(many smartphones are already trac"ing how many steps we ta"e every day!oogle )ow , the company's virtual assistant, "eeps score of such data

automatically and periodically presents it to users, nudging them to wal"moreC.The numerous possibilities that trac"ing devices offer to health andinsurance industries are not lost on #'>eilly. F9ou "now the way thatadvertising turned out to be the native business model for the internet F hewondered at a recent conference. F thin" that insurance is going to be thenative business model for the internet of things .F Things do seem to beheading that way( in 1une, %icrosoft struc" a deal with +merican $amilynsurance, the eighth-largest home insurer in the US, in which bothcompanies will fund startups that want to put sensors into smart homes andsmart cars for the purposes of Fproactive protectionF.

+n insurance company would gladly subsidies the costs of installing yetanother sensor in your house – as long as it can automatically alert the firedepartment or ma"e front porch lights flash in case your smo"e detectorgoes off. $or now, accepting such trac"ing systems is framed as an e:trabenefit that can save us some money. But when do we reach a point wherenot using them is seen as a deviation – or, worse, an act of concealment –that ought to be punished with higher premiums

#r consider a %ay 23/4 report from 2323health, another thin"tan",proposing to e:tend ta: rebates to Britons who give up smo"ing, stay slimor drin" less. F=e propose 'payment by results', a financial reward forpeople who become active partners in their health, whereby if you, fore:ample, "eep your blood sugar levels down, <uit smo"ing, "eep weightoff, GorH ta"e on more self-care, there will be a ta: rebate or an end-of-yearbonus,F they state. Smart gadgets are the natural allies of such schemes(they document the results and can even help achieve them – by constantlynagging us to do what's e:pected.The unstated assumption of most such reports is that the unhealthy are notonly a burden to society but that they deserve to be punished fiscally for

nowC for failing to be responsible. $or what else could possibly e:plain their health problems but their personal failings t's certainly not the power offood companies or class-based differences or various political andeconomic inDustices. #ne can wear a do en powerful sensors, own a smartmattress and even do a close daily reading of one's poop – as some self-trac"ing aficionados are wont to do – but those inDustices would still benowhere to be seen, for they are not the "ind of stuff that can be measured

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with a sensor. The devil doesn't wear data. Social inDustices are muchharder to trac" than the everyday lives of the individuals whose lives theyaffect.

n shifting the focus of regulation from reining in institutional and corporatemalfeasance to perpetual electronic guidance of individuals, algorithmicregulation offers us a good-old technocratic utopia of politics withoutpolitics. Nisagreement and conflict, under this model, are seen asunfortunate byproducts of the analog era – to be solved through datacollection – and not as inevitable results of economic or ideologicalconflicts.

Lowever, a politics without politics does not mean a politics without controlor administration. +s #'>eilly writes in his essay( F)ew technologies ma"eit possible to reduce the amount of regulation while actually increasing theamount of oversight and production of desirable outcomes.F Thus, it's amista"e to thin" that Silicon Ealley wants to rid us of governmentinstitutions. ts dream state is not the small government of libertarians – asmall state, after all, needs neither fancy gadgets nor massive servers toprocess the data – but the data-obsessed and data-obese state ofbehavioral economists.

The nudging state is enamored of feedbac" technology, for its "ey foundingprinciple is that while we behave irrationally, our irrationality can becorrected – if only the environment acts upon us, nudging us towards theright option. Unsurprisingly, one of the three lonely references at the end of#'>eilly's essay is to a 23/2 speech entitled F >egulation( ?oo"ingBac"ward, ?oo"ing $orwardF by ;ass Sunstein , the prominent +mericanlegal scholar who is the chief theorist of the nudging state.

+nd while the nudgers have already captured the state by ma"ingbehavioral psychology the favorite idiom of government bureaucracy –Naniel @ahneman is in, %achiavelli is out – the algorithmic regulation lobbyadvances in more clandestine ways. They create innocuous non-profitorgani ations li"e ;ode for +merica which then co-opt the state – under the

guise of encouraging talented hac"ers to tac"le civic problems.

Such initiatives aim to reprogramme the state and ma"e it feedbac"-friendly, crowding out other means of doing politics. $or all those trac"ingapps, algorithms and sensors to wor", databases need interoperability –which is what such pseudo-humanitarian organi ations, with their ardent

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belief in open data, demand. +nd when the government is too slow to moveat Silicon Ealley's speed, they simply move inside the government. Thus,1ennifer ahl"a, the founder of ;ode for +merica and a protOgO of #'>eilly,became the deputy chief technology officer of the US government – whilepursuing a one-year Finnovation fellowshipF from the =hite Louse.

;ash-strapped governments welcome such coloni ation by technologists –especially if it helps to identify and clean up datasets that can be profitablysold to companies who need such data for advertising purposes. >ecentclashes over the sale of student and health data in the U@ are Dust aprecursor of battles to come( after all state assets have been privati ed,data is the ne:t target. $or #'>eilly, open data is Fa "ey enabler of themeasurement revolutionF.This Fmeasurement revolutionF see"s to <uantify the efficiency of various

social programmes, as if the rationale behind the social nets that some ofthem provide was to achieve perfection of delivery. The actual rationale, ofcourse, was to enable a fulfilling life by suppressing certain an:ieties, sothat citi ens can pursue their life proDects relatively undisturbed. This visiondid spawn a vast bureaucratic apparatus and the critics of the welfare statefrom the left – most prominently %ichel $oucault – were right to <uestion itsdisciplining inclinations. )onetheless, neither perfection nor efficiency werethe Fdesired outcomeF of this system. Thus, to compare the welfare statewith the algorithmic state on those grounds is misleading.

But we can compare their respective visions for human fulfilment – and therole they assign to mar"ets and the state. Silicon Ealley's offer is clear(than"s to ubi<uitous feedbac" loops, we can all become entrepreneurs andta"e care of our own affairsK +s Brian ;hes"y, the chief e:ecutive of

+irbnb, told the Atlantic last year, F=hat happens when everybody is abrand =hen everybody has a reputation very person can become anentrepreneur.FUnder this vision, we will all code for +mericaKC in the morning,drive Uber cars in the afternoon, and rent out our "itchens as restaurants –courtesy of +irbnb – in the evening. +s #'>eilly writes of Uber and similarcompanies, Fthese services as" every passenger to rate their driver anddrivers to rate their passengerC. Nrivers who provide poor service areeliminated. >eputation does a better Dob of ensuring a superb customere:perience than any amount of government regulation.FThe state behind the Fsharing economyF does not wither awayI it might beneeded to ensure that the reputation accumulated on Uber, +irbnb andother platforms of the Fsharing economyF is fully li<uid and transferable,

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creating a world where our every social interaction is recorded andassessed, erasing whatever differences e:ist between social domains.Someone, somewhere will eventually rate you as a passenger, a houseguest, a student, a patient, a customer. =hether this ran"ing infrastructurewill be decentrali ed, provided by a giant li"e !oogle or rest with the stateis not yet clear but the overarching obDective is( to ma"e reputation into afeedbac"-friendly social net that could protect the truly responsible citi ensfrom the vicissitudes of deregulation.

+dmiring the reputation models of Uber and +irbnb, #'>eilly wantsgovernments to be Fadopting them where there are no demonstrable illeffectsF. But what counts as an Fill effectF and how to demonstrate it is a"ey <uestion that belongs to the how of politics that algorithmic regulationwants to suppress. t's easy to demonstrate Fill effectsF if the goal of

regulation is efficiency but what if it is something else Surely, there aresome benefits – fewer visits to the psychoanalyst, perhaps – in not havingyour every social interaction ran"ed

The imperative to evaluate and demonstrate FresultsF and FeffectsF alreadypresupposes that the goal of policy is the optimi ation of efficiency.Lowever, as long as democracy is irreducible to a formula, its compositevalues will always lose this battle( they are much harder to <uantify.

$or Silicon Ealley, though, the reputation-obsessed algorithmic state of thesharing economy is the new welfare state. f you are honest andhardwor"ing, your online reputation would reflect this, producing a highlypersonali ed social net. t is FultrastableF in +shby's sense( while thewelfare state assumes the e:istence of specific social evils it tries to fight,the algorithmic state ma"es no such assumptions. The future threats canremain fully un"nowable and fully addressable – on the individual level.

Silicon Ealley, of course, is not alone in touting such ultrastable individualsolutions. )assim Taleb, in his best-selling 23/2 boo" Antifragile , ma"es asimilar, if more philosophical, plea for ma:imi ing our individualresourcefulness and resilience( don't get one Dob but many, don't ta"e ondebt, count on your own e:pertise. t's all about resilience, ris"-ta"ing and,as Taleb puts it, Fhaving s"in in the gameF. +s 1ulian >eid and Brad vanswrite in their new boo", Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously , thisgrowing cult of resilience mas"s a tacit ac"nowledgement that no collectiveproDect could even aspire to tame the proliferating threats to humane:istence – we can only hope to e<uip ourselves to tac"le them individually.

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F=hen policy-ma"ers engage in the discourse of resilience,F write >eid andvans, Fthey do so in terms which aim e:plicitly at preventing humans fromconceiving of danger as a phenomenon from which they might see"freedom and even, in contrast, as that to which they must now e:posethemselves.F=hat, then, is the progressive alternative FThe enemy of my enemy is myfriendF doesn't wor" here( Dust because Silicon Ealley is attac"ing thewelfare state doesn't mean that progressives should defend it to the verylast bullet or tweetC. $irst, even leftist governments have limited space forfiscal manoeuvres, as the "ind of discretionary spending re<uired tomoderni e the welfare state would never be approved by the globalfinancial mar"ets. +nd it's the ratings agencies and bond mar"ets – not thevoters – who are in charge today.

Second, the leftist criti<ue of the welfare state has become only morerelevant today when the e:act borderlines between welfare and securityare so blurry. =hen !oogle's +ndroid powers so much of our everyday life,the government's temptation to govern us through remotely controlled carsand alarm-operated soap dispensers will be all too great. This will e:pandgovernment's hold over areas of life previously free from regulation.

=ith so much data, the government's favorite argument in fighting terror – if only the citi ens "new as much as we do, they too would impose all theselegal e:ceptions – easily e:tends to other domains, from health to climate

change. ;onsider a recent academic paper that used !oogle search datato study obesity patterns in the US, finding significant correlation betweensearch "eywords and body mass inde: levels. F>esults suggest greatpromise of the idea of obesity monitoring through real-time !oogle TrendsdataF, note the authors, which would be Fparticularly attractive forgovernment health institutions and private businesses such as insurancecompanies.Ff !oogle senses a flu epidemic somewhere, it's hard to challenge its hunch

– we simply lac" the infrastructure to process so much data at this scale.!oogle can be proven wrong after the fact – as has recently been the casewith its flu trends data , which was shown to overestimate the number ofinfections, possibly because of its failure to account for the intense mediacoverage of flu – but so is the case with most terrorist alerts. t's theimmediate, real-time nature of computer systems that ma"es them perfectallies of an infinitely e:panding and pre-emption-obsessed state.erhaps, the case of !loria lacente and her failed trip to the beach wasnot Dust a historical oddity but an early omen of how real-time computing,

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combined with ubi<uitous communication technologies, would transformthe state. #ne of the few people to have heeded that omen was a little-"nown +merican advertising e:ecutive called >obert %acBride, whopushed the logic behind #peration ;orral to its ultimate conclusions in hisunDustly neglected /05P boo", The Automated State .

+t the time, +merica was debating the merits of establishing a national datacentre to aggregate various national statistics and ma"e it available togovernment agencies. %acBride attac"ed his contemporaries' inability tosee how the state would e:ploit the metadata accrued as everything wasbeing computeri ed. nstead of Fa large scale, up-to-date +ustro-LungarianempireF, modern computer systems would produce Fa bureaucracy ofalmost celestial capacityF that can Fdiscern and define relationships in amanner which no human bureaucracy could ever hope to doF.

F=hether one bowls on a Sunday or visits a library instead is GofH noconse<uence since no one chec"s those things,F he wrote. )ot so whencomputer systems can aggregate data from different domains and spotcorrelations. F#ur individual behavior in buying and selling an automobile, ahouse, or a security, in paying our debts and ac<uiring new ones, and inearning money and being paid, will be noted meticulously and studiede:haustively,F warned %acBride. Thus, a citi en will soon discover that Fhischoice of maga ine subscriptionsM can be found to indicate accurately theprobability of his maintaining his property or his interest in the education ofhis children.F This sounds eerily similar to the recent case of a haplessfather who found that his daughter was pregnant from a coupon that Target,a retailer, sent to their house. Target's hunch was based on its analysis ofproducts – for e:ample, unscented lotion – usually bought by otherpregnant women.$or %acBride the conclusion was obvious. F olitical rights won't be violatedbut will resemble those of a small stoc"holder in a giant enterprise,F hewrote. FThe mar" of sophistication and savoir-faire in this future will be thegrace and fle:ibility with which one accepts one's role and ma"es the mostof what it offers.F n other words, since we are all entrepreneurs first – and

citi ens second, we might as well ma"e the most of it.=hat, then, is to be done Technophobia is no solution. rogressives needtechnologies that would stic" with the spirit, if not the institutional form, ofthe welfare state, preserving its commitment to creating ideal conditions forhuman flourishing. ven some ultrastability is welcome. Stability was alaudable goal of the welfare state before it had encountered a trap( inspecifying the e:act protections that the state was to offer against the

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e:cesses of capitalism, it could not easily deflect new, previouslyunspecified forms of e:ploitation.

Low do we build welfarism that is both decentrali ed and ultrastable +form of guaranteed basic income – whereby some welfare services arereplaced by direct cash transfers to citi ens – fits the two criteria.;reating the right conditions for the emergence of political communitiesaround causes and issues they deem relevant would be another good step.$ull compliance with the principle of ultrastability dictates that such issuescannot be anticipated or dictated from above – by political parties or tradeunions – and must be left unspecified.

=hat can be specified is the "ind of communications infrastructure neededto abet this cause( it should be free to use, hard to trac", and open to new,

subversive uses. Silicon Ealley's e:isting infrastructure is great for fulfillingthe needs of the state, not of self-organi ing citi ens. t can, of course, beredeployed for activist causes – and it often is – but there's no reason toaccept the status <uo as either ideal or inevitable.

=hy, after all, appropriate what should belong to the people in the firstplace =hile many of the creators of the internet bemoan how low theircreature has fallen, their anger is misdirected. The fault is not with thatamorphous entity but, first of all, with the absence of robust technologypolicy on the left – a policy that can counter the pro-innovation, pro-

disruption, pro-privati ation agenda of Silicon Ealley. n its absence, allthese emerging political communities will operate with their wings clipped.=hether the ne:t #ccupy =all Street would be able to occupy anything in atruly smart city remains to be seen( most li"ely, they would be out-censoredand out-droned.

To his credit, %acBride understood all of this in /05P. F!iven the resourcesof modern technology and planning techni<ues,F he warned, Fit is really nogreat tric" to transform even a country li"e ours into a smoothly runningcorporation where every detail of life is a mechanical function to be ta"encare of.F %acBride's fear is #'>eilly's master plan( the government, hewrites, ought to be modelled on the Flean startupF approach of SiliconEalley, which is Fusing data to constantly revise and tune its approach tothe mar"etF. t's this very approach that $aceboo" has recently deployed toma:imi e user engagement on the site( if showing users more happystories does the tric", so be it.

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+lgorithmic regulation, whatever its immediate benefits, will give us apolitical regime where technology corporations and governmentbureaucrats call all the shots. The olish science fiction writer Stanislaw?em, in a pointed criti<ue of cybernetics published, as it happens, roughlyat the same time as The Automated State , put it best( FSociety cannot giveup the burden of having to decide about its own fate by sacrificing thisfreedom for the sa"e of the cybernetic regulator.F