FEATURE5 December 2018

Carl Miller in seven

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Carl Miller is research director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at thinktank Demos. He is an expert in how social media is changing society and politics, and has written a book, The Death of the Gods: the new global power grab, published by Penguin Random House.

Carl Miller Demos_crop

1What’s been the most significant shift in power over the past 20 years?

The biggest shift is how power now touches us through digital technologies woven through our daily lives. Technology acts like a camouflage for power, making it weird and unfamiliar. We know less about what influences our lives today than we did in the past. 

2Has the nature of power changed in our digital society?

Whether in forms that are dispersed or concentrated, and whether for good or bad, these new forms of power have something in common that older, visible, more recognisable forms typically do not – they are far less constrained by rules. When power operates through technology, it often breaks out of the cages we’ve built to control it. Bluntly, power in the digital age has gone wild.

3Who has power that didn’t before, and who has lost it?

When writing the book, I met people who had found astonishing ...