Infomocracy - bookrastinating.com

Paperback, 400 pages

Published Aug. 7, 2017 by Tor.com.

ISBN:: 978-0-7653-9236-7

(2 reviews)

It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.

With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

1 edition

Noisy Deadlines reviewed Infomocracy by Malka Older (Centenal Cycle, #1)

A review from Goodreads

5 stars

This one is very social-political with interesting ideas of a different flavor of democracy. In a near-future there are no countries as we have today, but rather groups of 100,000 people that make up a "centenal". So while walking around you can cross various "centenals" on your path. Each "centenal" has its own political party. The political parties are like global governments, they can rule various centenals at the same time. Every 10 years there is a global election in which citizens choose their centenals governments. The most voted government becomes "The Supermajority", but I could not understand exactly what is its power or its role in the global decision making process. It seemed a super important position to fight for, tho (maybe I have to read the next book in the series to find out).

Also, there’s "Information", a large nonprofit organization that controls and vets what information people …

This one is very social-political with interesting ideas of a different flavor of democracy. In a near-future there are no countries as we have today, but rather groups of 100,000 people that make up a "centenal". So while walking around you can cross various "centenals" on your path. Each "centenal" has its own political party. The political parties are like global governments, they can rule various centenals at the same time. Every 10 years there is a global election in which citizens choose their centenals governments. The most voted government becomes "The Supermajority", but I could not understand exactly what is its power or its role in the global decision making process. It seemed a super important position to fight for, tho (maybe I have to read the next book in the series to find out).

Also, there’s "Information", a large nonprofit organization that controls and vets what information people can access on their handhelds. I couldn't help but think of Google. What if Google became a non-profit that everybody accepts as the only source of news, navigation maps, encyclopedia, social communication tools? That's what's going on here.

So there is espionage, political campaigns, activism and information censorship. Discussions about the elections process, democracy, monopolies, immigration, disinformation control, minorities representation, war, technology.

There is commentary about the Internet and how it transforms into an essential part of everybody's life. How it is a tool to keep the system running and how it could be used to manipulate and control. Something that is actually disturbingly close to our present situation.

It's a huge thought experiment on democracy and representation. We follow various characters, each one working for a different political government, or for Information, or just rebels that want to break down the system.

I thought the book was not so action-packed as I would like, but the thought-provoking ideas were worth the read!

callan reviewed Infomocracy by Malka Older (Centenal Cycle, #1)

Might recommend to some, but def not my thing

2 stars

I wanted to read this because the description of it sounds fascinating, and there are some elements that are interesting to ponder over. But the character development is basically nonexistent and the plot is complicated in a way that makes it hard to stick with because you don’t really know/understand the people involved - and thus don’t really care. No offense to the author, who seems like a wonderful human and a deep thinker, but this is not good writing for a novel.