... a welcome arrival on the scene.

Susskind’s remarkably comprehensive book explores the challenges new digital technologies create, asking what the power and potential of digital systems means for human liberty, democracy, justice, and politics. Most importantly, he argues that the political ideas we have held for centuries are ill-equipped to respond to the challenges posed by current and future technological innovations.

... offers a blueprint for the regulation of digital technology...It is an ambitious goal, and the book suffers from the scale of the task it sets itself. Since technology is now intertwined with just about every aspect of society, it is hard to get a grip on what exactly the object of this regulation is, other than, well, everything. Consequently, for a book that seeks to address systemic problems, The Digital Republic has a rather piecemeal and slippery quality which makes it hard for the reader to get a grip on it.

Everyone talks about the dangers, but almost no one is suggesting what to do about them. That makes The Digital Republic, by the British lawyer and academic Jamie Susskind, a welcome arrival. Susskind does an excellent job of diagnosing the problems and offers an array of well-constructed solutions, though some are more practical than others.

Susskind suggests we instead try 'mini-publics' – most often seen in the form of 'citizen assemblies', where you bring a small but representative group of the population together and give them expert briefings about a difficult choice to be made, after which they create policy options...What he doesn’t acknowledge is that this just delays the problem. After the mini-publics deliberate, you are back at the original choices: do nothing, legislate or regulate.

While urging U.S. and EU readers to understand we can do better than leave people to fend for themselves against corporate power, Susskind recognizes formidable challenges to governing digital technologies in a world where the digital is political.

... thoughtful.