In his short story "A More Perfect Union," L.E. Modesitt, Jr., who has worked for 20 years in politics among his other occupations, describes tongue-in-cheek how a political scientist/campaign manager in 2067 plots the rise of politician William Lester, not to the US Presidency, but to the head of the North American Union, which is gaining in importance since rising sea level has driven much of the US population to Canada.
Asked what
services a mad political scientist can provide, the narrator explains,
"I use academic and other research methods to gain the maximum positive
emphasis for whomever I work for, and the maximum negative exposure for
his opponent. That's the polite way of putting it. Everything is
aboveboard and clean in the dirtiest way possible with no fingerprints."
Or to be succinct, "Old fashioned results with no legal fuss."
Modesitt probably wrote this story in 2011 or 2012 since it was published in the 2013 anthology "The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination.". What is scary is how prescient Modesitt is about how social media and the web can be used to manipulate elections. Webchures target various voter niches such as voter group 1-A Beta "undecided, highly educated, religiously affiliated, self-identified, self-made professionals." Photos in Webchures are very subtly enhanced to make a happily married political opponent and his male staff seem suggestively closer and more interested in each other than the paperwork they are examining. Speeches are tailored to the specific audience being addressed.
"Now, an old-line news analyst of the past century might have caught a certain lack of philosophical consistency, but after the passage of the revised Freedom of Information Act of 2040 by the U.S. Congress, which affirmed the right of every citizen to the news of his or her choice, unhampered by contradictory facts, none of the 207 different news channels had a news analyst interested in such, since hiring anybody for such a position might have subjected them to civil action under the FOIA [revised]."
The editor categorized this mad scientist tale under Rule 1776: "A real genius can fool all the people all the time." Is this where we are heading?
Modesitt probably wrote this story in 2011 or 2012 since it was published in the 2013 anthology "The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination.". What is scary is how prescient Modesitt is about how social media and the web can be used to manipulate elections. Webchures target various voter niches such as voter group 1-A Beta "undecided, highly educated, religiously affiliated, self-identified, self-made professionals." Photos in Webchures are very subtly enhanced to make a happily married political opponent and his male staff seem suggestively closer and more interested in each other than the paperwork they are examining. Speeches are tailored to the specific audience being addressed.
"Now, an old-line news analyst of the past century might have caught a certain lack of philosophical consistency, but after the passage of the revised Freedom of Information Act of 2040 by the U.S. Congress, which affirmed the right of every citizen to the news of his or her choice, unhampered by contradictory facts, none of the 207 different news channels had a news analyst interested in such, since hiring anybody for such a position might have subjected them to civil action under the FOIA [revised]."
The editor categorized this mad scientist tale under Rule 1776: "A real genius can fool all the people all the time." Is this where we are heading?
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