John Dewey and Citizen Politics
How Democracy Can Survive Artificial Intelligence and the Credo of Efficiency
Harry C. Boyte, 2017 John Dewey Society Lecture
San Antonio, April 27 2017
“Without some kind of oversight, the golem, not God, might emerge from machines…it is naïve to believe that government is competent, let alone in a position to control the development and deployment of robots, self-generating algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Business is self-interested and resists regulation. We, the people, are on our own here…”
Sue Halpern, “How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over”
“In the past the man has been first. In the future the System must be first.”
Frederick Winslow Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
From “Invictus,” Nelson Mandela’s favorite poem
Citizen politics, John Dewey, and the crisis in “modernity”
Can we become masters of our fate in an age of smart machines governed by an efficiency creed, with its conviction that “the system is the solution”? In this 2017 Dewey lecture I answer affirmatively the question raised by nine scientists in a Scientific American essay, “Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?” I argue that we need a different kind of politics, citizen-centered, educative, and empowering, as well as places to learn such politics and put it into practice. Drawing on Dewey, I use schools embedded in communities as a case study for developing civic power….
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