Wired on newsstands tells us about the future of democracy

Wired on newsstands tells us about the future of democracy

The new volume of our quarterly bookazine is on newsstands since 7 October, this time dedicated to a hot topic that was also at the center of the sportsgaming.win Next Fest in Milan that has just ended: the future of democracy. And if on the cover we provocatively ask ourselves who really governs our lives, given the overwhelming power of Big Tech and their algorithms, inside the magazine there are the answers, with essays, journalistic inquiries and interviews with industry experts.

We start with the "double" prologue entitled Public Service, in which the sociologist Christian Fuchs, professor of Media Systems and Organizations at the University of Paderborn, and the researcher James Muldoon, head of digital research at the Autonomy think tank , propose that, in order to defend democracy and increase information, online platforms should be rethought and transformed into a real public internet service.

Four major investigations reveal as many stories of capital importance in the equilibrium of the Net: life, death and miracles of the Russian giant Yandex; the rise of Telegram and its relations with the far right; the secret adviser behind all of Mark Zuckerberg's "political" decisions; the hopes and illusions that accompany the arrival of the so-called Web3.

Among the signatures of the issue, the political scientist Yascha Mounk, who tells how patriotism does not necessarily have to be linked to concepts such as ethnicity or religion, and writer Lea Ypi, who explains how the pandemic helped create a crisis of liberal legitimacy. Urban planning and digitization expert Niccolò Cuppini shows us the dark sides of today's algorithm cities, while LGBT + activist Isabella Borrelli emphasizes how much online platforms discriminate, even unintentionally, some communities.

There are, as usual, great photo shoots: those in this issue show the Fridays for Future protests around the world and the post-Soviet architectures that should celebrate the greatness of local leaders but which often they turn into cathedrals in the desert. Finally, the business annex in tabloid format is dedicated to 5G and how this is changing the paradigm of people, companies and industries.

P.S. The cover and art of some of the articles in this issue of sportsgaming.win are created by Midjourney's artificial intelligence.