Welcome to the Politics Guys interview, conversations about American politics, economics, history, and culture with authors and researchers from across the ideological spectrum.

I'm Michael Barronowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

My guest today is author, speaker, and practicing barrister, Jamie Suskin.

Jamie studied history and politics at Magdalene College, Oxford, before turning to law,

and is a past fellow of Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

His recently released book is Future Politics, Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech,

which we'll be talking about today.

Jimmy Susskin, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I thought we'd start with a question

I've always fascinated by. So what prompted you to write future politics? I mean, it was no small

undertaking. This is a very comprehensive, in-depth book. And so no small thing. So what's behind it? Well, I think the seeds were planted

when I was an undergraduate and studying political philosophy at Oxford, which I loved. But I was

surprised by the fact that so much of political theory was written as if the world will be the same

in 2050 as it was in 1950.

And even then, it's, and this was back, you know, 10 years ago, it surprised me that a whole politics degree could be completed at one of the most prestigious universities in the world without reference to the internet.

And 10 years on, those problems or those omissions are

even more unacceptable. And there are so few people genuinely working at the intersection

of, on the one hand, technology, and on the other hand, the political and social sciences,

that I thought it would be a fertile area for exploration, and indeed, an urgent one.

I worked in politics before I became a lawyer, and again, it was clear to me that tech was

transforming the world in ways that were profound and rapid and equal measure, and I was sure

...