Infomocracy Quotes

“We find that the people who hate each other that much rarely view the same type of Information.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“you can give a voter Information, but you can’t make them think.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“We know ‘vote for us and we will smite your enemies’ works.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“We want people to understand that they’re choosing a set of policies and principles, a way of life, not a person.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“those may be exactly the people who pose the greatest threat to the system: the people who can still remember, with rancor and longing and the inevitable distortions of time, what things were like before.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“democracy is of limited usefulness when there are no good choices, or when the good choices become bad as soon as you’ve chosen them, or when all the Information access in the world can’t make people use it.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“The most important assets for the election systems are trust and routine. Both are badly damaged already;”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Then, with a flash of anger directed somewhere off in the direction of the streetlamp: “Why do people always expect you to trust them? With all the shit that goes on in this world, I don't know why anyone expects my trust just because they are unverifiably, according to themselves, a nice guy. Who the hell defaults to trust?”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“There was a study done with minimally educated voters who, given a hypothetical ballot, picked the names of famous serial killers over randomly generated names as well as over those of actual, less well-known politicians.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“There is nothing that suits us more than most of the world believing that their will is being carried out by governments that do exactly as they please.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“all the hullabaloo for people who barely even think about their votes.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Systems include their by-products; it all comes from the pattern of incentives they create. It’s how they make people think, how they make people behave.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“The comparison sheets are formatted as a grid, with important topics across the top and governments down the side. There are pull-out sections for local issues at various levels—centenal, municipality, microclimate, island, time zone, language group. Each square offers the stated position of the government, an explanation of what that was calculated to mean in practice, and, if applicable, the deviation from that stated position indicated either by previous performance or current rhetoric. Citizens can even see a personalized grid with specific outcomes of each government for them: how much they would pay in taxes, for example, or changes in the funding projected to go to their kids’ schools, or the probability that their local bar will be shut down.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Twenty years ago, the people of the world came together in an unprecedented step to form a new international order. Since the first global election, war among participating jurisdictions has been eradicated, and prosperity and trade have spread.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“His Information presets had very little to tell him during his rural detour, except the occasional comment about the type of tree sliding by or when the road was constructed, and the rush of exposition in the airport comes as a shock, especially on such little sleep. Ken quickly learns, and completely fails to absorb, a great deal about the politicking involved in the airport’s initial construction and the decision on its location, as well as which airlines serve it and since when and to which connections, and its place in various ranking schemes (official associations, user-generated, statistically based), while bypassing reams on the sourcing of materials, the architecture firm, and the history of the land below it. Along the way, ads—flat and projected, still and animated—crowd his vision, all of them translated and most of them annotated by his Information: he learns that the company trying to sell him whiskey is a subsidiary of Coca-Cola (not surprising, since they are part of the corporate government that owns this airport) and sees the annual statement summary for a firm offering wealth management. Not having any wealth to speak of, he ignores both the ad and the background Information discrediting it.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“He shrugs, and fires off a four-character adage that Ken’s not familiar with. It seems to suggest peace without justice isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Or peace without vengeance. The phrasing is ambiguous.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Every centenal, every collection of one hundred thousand neighbors, matters, whether it is spread over hundreds of miles in the tundra or crammed into a couple of overdeveloped blocks in Dhaka.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Yes, they are right on principle, but democracy is of limited usefulness when there are no good choices, or when the good choices become bad as soon as you’ve chosen them, or when all the Information access in the”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Yes, they are right on principle, but democracy is of limited usefulness when there are no good choices, or when the good choices become bad as soon as you’ve chosen them, or when all the Information access in the world can’t make people use it.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“She wants to think that this is a sign that it is an empty threat, that they are targeting older voters for whom those old associations still ring strong. But then, those may be exactly the people who pose the greatest threat to the system: the people who can still remember, with rancor and longing and the inevitable distortions of time, what things were like before.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“When you watch TV, do you ever feel guilty about wasting your life?” a”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Mishima is also wearing black but in the thinnest of airy cottons, flowing around her body in a way that probably obscures a few concealed weapons. “Domaine. Imagine meeting you at this party.” Domaine is too busy imagining those weapons. He considers himself an eminently reconstructed male and is disturbed by how much those images arouse him.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“They're called Free2B, which sounds like they might promulgate that kind of individualism that gets annoying quickly once your neighbor starts playing gronkytonk at top volume at five a.m. or refuses to donate to the volunteer fire department until their house is burning down, but when he scans their policies, he sees they’re reasonably socially conscious. If they've got anything in a more temperate climate, he's seriously considering moving there once the election is over.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“you can give a voter Information, but you can’t make him think.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Suzuki Todry sits down next to him
[an allusion to this?
Now Jenny Diver, ho, ho, yeah, Sukey Tawdry
Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky's back in town
— Bertolt Brecht, “Mack the Knife,” 1928]”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“The percentage of voters who, according to their best Information, would vote to change the entire system, or to threaten it by going to war. It’s a small but not insignificant coalition of haves who think they deserve to be have-mores; nationalists who consider some aspect of identity (ethnicity, religion, place if birth) more important than the government one chooses; and all-out cranks and contrarians. Maybe six to eight percent.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“nationalist governments tend to have trade difficulties.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“The whole point of micro-democracy was to allow people to choose their government wherever they were, but plenty of people didn’t agree with their 99,999 geographically closest friends.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Mishima herself didn’t graduate from university, so she can understand bootstrapping.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“he would say impossible, but elections are rife with unexpected events—”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy