How will the future of politics and political campaigning look like? Who will be the heroes in the future political battles? Where will the battle take place - on the streets or in the virtual world? What weapons will the future political parties use? In this report, the Institute of Customer Experience raises many of such questions and presents possible scenarios that might become a reality given the present trends.

1. the future
politics
of
a report by

2. Who will be the heroes?
Where will they battle it out?
What weapons will they use?
the kurukshetra
of future politics

3. the future
Voters Campaigners Leaders

4. Voters

5. tweeting instead of voting
Sir Richard Branson debates the possibility of the
Internet revolutionizing the future of polling.
He notes that Estonia had a quarter of its votes cast
online in 2011 with other countries like the UAE and
Australia experimenting with the same.
People are no longer reticent to express their prefer-
ences for political parties through Tweets and Likes.
Social media has become a quantitative indicator of
political behavior.
The voter of the future might never even enter a polling
booth.
• Is the Internet the future of voting?
• Will future elections be all about
voting and counting the number of
Likes and Tweets for a political party?

6. secret ballot a luxury
Every citizen and voter can be increasingly monitored through
live cameras, social media, drones, etc.
Every channel data can then be analyzed to check on changing
political inclinations.
As our devices get more interconnected and we become more
device dependent, the political parties already know whom we
will vote for.
Sci-fi author Daniel Abraham believes that as electronic voting
gets more sophisticated, the notion of a secret ballot becomes
difficult to enforce.
According to him, In the future when we eventually have to
verify Electronic and Internet-based voting, the secret ballot
will be compromised, making secrecy a luxury.
• Will the secret ballot exist in the future?
• Will some voters refrain from voting to
avoid their preferences from being made
public?

7. If there are eyes on every voter, then every voter has eyes
on the government. The social media supporter volunteers
to tweet, blog or produce live-streaming of speeches. They
also keep a check on other political parties.
Facebook groups with street-based wings are growing for
all kinds of volunteering, activism and passionate debate
-- both legitimate and illegitimate. As a movement that is
not a part of the mainstream political campaigning it can
be described as "para-political". This is now a potent and
growing phenomenon.
smart (phone) warrior
• Can the “para-political” supplant the
mainstream?

8. People have been embracing virtual currencies.
One of the reasons is to bypass the government
regulated currency markets.
On the other hand, every political party needs
money to power its campaigns.
virtual money and government
• How will the emergence of virtual
money impact politics that powers the
government?
a love-hate relationship?

9. The crowdsourcing revolution has given a new meaning to
the individual. Every individual becomes a spoke in the
wheel that drives a political party.
Crowdsouring has implications on how a party is formed,
who are its members, how they function and what they
want to do.
muscles a.k.a crowds
• Will crowds become the engines that
run political parties of the future?
Iceland saw a massive social unrest in 2008 following the banking collapse. The country's political land-
scape changed drastically. Many officials left office, and there was a general distrust for legislative lead-
ers. Therefore, when the country decided to modernize its constitution the officials went straight to the
citizens themselves. As a result, Iceland's new constitution is the first ever to be composed through
crowdsourcing.

10. The development model set by programmers and software
developers becomes the “development” model for politics and
governments.
As crowds take on the management of political parties, politics
eventually becomes open source.
open source politics
• What will be the design implications for
open sourced government?
• In the future, will we stop voting for po-
litical parties and leaders and instead vote
for ideas and thoughts?

11. Future Scenarios

12. Humans have stopped relying on
other humans for important tasks
like vigilance, politics, driving, etc.
They have employed robots to take
care of mission-critical tasks. On the
same lines, governments of many
countries have abolished Democra-
cy and brought in “Mach-cracy” –
machine enabled autocracy.
scenario 1:
In India, The National Iron
Flower Party has created robots
that have been programmed to
aim for equality and justice with
continuous development.
The robots take all the
important decisions in the
government and make sure that
the decisions are implemented
with no errors.
The biggest fear is not of
corruption due to money, rather
it is that of virus attacks.
mach-cracy

13. After the Transhuman revolution
the entire democratic process
has been reworked to suit the
needs of the time.
A stream of algorithms are put in
place to create relative “utopias” in
the form of cities.
voting for “utopias”
Voters no longer vote for their
leaders but vote for the kind of
utopia they would like to live in.
After every election the voters
are matched with the kind of
city that would suit them best
and are relocated accordingly.
In the recent election, a huge
migration was seen to the
“Immortal city” where voters
chose to use technology to
perpetually extend their life.
A dip was observed in the voter
migration to the “Trancendence
atolls” where voters chose to
die natural deaths but have
their minds uploaded after
death to serve the Global
Synaptic Network to teach
future generations
scenario 2:

14. Elections no longer occur once in 5
years.
They are a continuous process with
the crowd playing a key and critical
role in self governance.
The Electoral Commission Network
has now made the political process
“Gamified.”
gamified governance
The leader boards are
constantly changing, forcing the
candidates to take charge
constantly.
When watchdog organizations
identify activities that are not
progressive, they reflect on the
leader board.
Decision-making is determined
by the positions of the
candidates on the leader board.
Leaders can check in to
locations and let their voters
know how much they have or
intend to equalize that space.
Voters who earn “influencer”
badges have greater power to
be able to affect policies.
scenario 3:

15. Campaigners

16. The Internet democracy was said to welcome an era of “truth.”
However, campaigners are now equipped with a strong
weapon, that of ‘disinformation’.
Current trends indicate that the Internet audience and social
media users actively participate in some form of disinformation
with or without their knowledge.
As Twitter, Facebook, Google increasingly become reliable
sources of information, Internet audiences look no further.
These are the easiest target segments for disinformation
agents.
information trojan horses
• If disinformation becomes easier, how
will voters be able to verify ‘information’ ?
• To what extent will campaigners go, to
use this as a weapon?
Example: Rwanda’s Twitter-Gate: The Disinformation
Campaign of Africa’s Digital President
Cognitive Dissonance in
Politics
Frantz Fanon, Martinique,
Doctor of Psychiatry,
assisted victims
of torture in the Algerian
War (1954-62),
author of The Wretched of
the Earth with preface by
Jean-Paul Sartre.

17. Job Profiles for Disinformation Agents:
News Jackers:
News Jacker is a person who injects ideas or angles into
breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media
coverage.
The new generation is always on the lookout for interest-
ing news stories. These breaking news generated by the
News Jackers are the stories that get picked up easily.
Knowing about the ‘Breaking news’ also means getting
more social attention and is becoming a matter of
self-esteem as well, for citizens.
trojan horses: news jackers
• How do we check the validity of a
‘breaking news’ item?
• What checks need to be built in the new media to
discourage news jacking?
• How do we make people more responsible when
sharing news?

18. Job Profiles for Disinformation Agents:
Cyber Magicians :
Highly trained professionals who have several main
objectives such as “injecting all sorts of false material
onto the Internet” and “using social sciences and other
techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism
to generate outcomes they consider desirable.”
As people get more disconnected from the real world
and get more connected on the virtual world, it is easier
for cyber magicians to target people’s behaviors and
decisions.
trojan horses: cyber magicians
• Will a Cyber Magician become an important part
of every future political party’s campaigning team?
• Will every political campaigner have ‘cyber magic’
as a necessary skill set?

19. Campaigns will use wearable devices like Google Glass
for seamless communication between campaign work-
ers. Workers can remotely watch live stream of volun-
teers talking to voters, capture footage of opposition
campaigns, debate policies and share their points of
view immediately.
Google Glass wearers may even be able to receive
information about a rally nearby, or volunteer opportu-
nities.
politics through the glass:
• Who will be watched - the voters or the
politicians?
• What will the Glass show – the “actual”
reality or the “constructed” realities?
wearable devices

20. War With Memes and Viral Politics
Campaigners have a new emerging tool: humor.
“Humor allows us to disarm and engage in conversa-
tions that we otherwise couldn’t do” —Dan Sinker
What’s news in 2014 is what shows up in your Facebook
feed and on your Twitter stream.
This has opened up a new avenue for communication
with its own style—the future of political campaigning
through Internet memes. Memes will not just be “silly
jokes on the web.”
They will be the chosen medium to communicate politi-
cal discourse. In an age of micro-blogging, social status
updating, and GIF posting, tightly woven social code like
memes are incredibly efficient at communicating com-
plex ideas.
• Is comedy the next serious weapon for
campaigners?
war with memes

21. The arrival of Addressable TV will help campaigners
target their candidates in greater detail.
They will target specific customers, using voting history,
credit scores, purchase patterns, demographics, media
and subscriptions.
Xbox Live was described as the “Future of Polling” when
it launched the Xbox Live hub in 2012, increasing
two-way dialogue and creating a massive interactive-TV
pilot.
Indian Context
In India, televisions are a popular giveaways during
elections. Many of the popular Indian cable TV channels
are allegedly directly under the control of political
parties. With the advent of Addressable TV, the powers
of persuasion with the mass media are limitless and very
potent.
• How will political parties and lobbyists who
own networks take advantage of this tech-
nology?
addressable TV
Media consolidation over the years has led
to the current scenario where a couple of
big corporations own most of the media
industry. Media consolidation over the
years has led to the current scenario where
a couple of big corporations own most of
the media industry.
Has the broadcast medium
turned into a narrowcast
medium?
In the US elections, Obama’s
campaigning team used big data
to find out that TV land was the
channel of preference to target
the potential voters. So much so
that the channel didn’t air a
single Romney campaign
commercial.

22. Future Scenarios

23. Election 2024 - He who has the
strongest meme wins.
India has become a Tripartisanship:
Iron Flower Party, Silver Palm, and
the Cotton Caps of India
strongestmeme wins
Internet penetration has reached
90%. Social media penetration is
at 80%.
The Internet has brought in a
climate of truth; information
regarding corruption and misuse
of power are made public using
the Internet.
.
However, the public has difficul-
ty in identifying the “true story.”
Social media has become a
strong weapon; disinformation
being the ammunition. The ease
of content creation gives rise to
several fabricated stories online
Confirmation Bias of voters
makes them search for content
that they believe in. It's almost
as though he who has the
strongest meme wins.
scenario 1:

24. Wearable technology is gaining
momentum and hitting the main-
stream.
Tensions are high because of the
level of transparency that they will
bring along.
facts ordreams
Both the voters and the leaders
are strapped with “Google Glass”
and “Apple Monitors,” which will
allow them to determine the
“likelihood” of an event or the
“truth” behind it.
The elections turn into a
fact-based war leaving little room
for fiction.
With the departing of fiction
from the election scene,
campaigners and candidates
forget the need to get voters to
“dream” of a future.
scenario 2:

25. Amina was part of a UN team
that got a chance to travel to a
remote place in Middle East.
However, when she reached
there she found extreme pover-
ty. People were dying of diseas-
es and hunger.
hacked
She took some pictures of the
place and posted them online.
She came back to her base
location.
When she again opened her
account, she found that it was
hacked.
The photos were showing people
in the same place dying of
hunger and being helped by the
local politicians and their parties.
The photos were showing
people in the same place dying
of hunger and being helped by
the local politicians and their
parties
The messages displayed were in
praise of the political system.
Top newspapers were running
the story, the Cyber Magicians
and News Jackers had compro-
mised her account.
scenario 3:

26. Leaders

27. Self-monitoring by Leaders
Life-logging of a leader –
To put the general public in constant touch with their
leaders and for the leaders to show that they “really”
care!
Currently, many political leaders have actively started
using social media. It gives them an opportunity to
connect with the public and an opportunity to show
how actively they have been working on their cam-
paign.
With the advent of life-logging technologies, voters may
demand to see the life-logging reports of their leaders
to see if they have been working for them.
Self-monitoring as a Mode of Surveillance –
To prevent being implicated wrongly through sabotage
and sting operations, leaders may decide to get them-
selves “wired” and submit to sustained monitor-
ing/life-logging in order to protect themselves.
life-logging leaders
• As the electorate demands to know every-
thing about their leader, and transparency
as a trend increases, will it make it impossi-
ble for politicians to wear masks?

28. Digital Data Dictators & Tech Game of Thrones
Evgeny Morozov shows, in his book, that by falling for
the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet,
Western do-gooders may have missed how it also
entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it
harder—not easier—to promote democracy.
http://netdelusion.com/
In the future, are we looking at a Tech-Game of
Thrones where in Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon
with their ability to use data and start their own politi-
cal movements.
mahadata 2020
Who will be the Digital Dictators of the
future?

29. Virtual leaders and campaigns giving leaders a
“second life.”
One of the political campaigning events in the US
took place in the virtual world of Second Life.
Around 800 Residents joined unofficial support
groups for the mainline Democratic candidates:
Obama, with 219 members; Clinton, with 243 and
Edwards with 317.
the future:
●Is Second Life yet another channel in the
Web 2.0-era campaigning, following the
proven success of blogs, social networks,
and video streaming sites like YouTube?
●Or is it an over-hyped distraction from
more effective means of campaigning?
man, machine or maya
In the virtual world, everyone can create a virtual
persona. In that sense, everyone becomes equal.
The discussions break the geographic barriers.
●Do mediums like Second Life promise
more equal political opportunities?
●Will the current era press become
obsolete and will voters even get to see
the real leader?

30. Virtual Leaders and Campaigns:
The Hologram Leaders of the Future
Indian politician Narendra Modi recently deliv-
ered a speech using 3D holographic technology. It
was his way of handling the many requests from
BJP candidates that he visit and address their
constituencies. Taking the high-tech campaign to
a new level, he addressed more than 1,000
“Bharat Vijay” rallies in different Indian states on
April 7, 2014 using the advanced 3D hologram
technology.
In January 2014, Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan also used 3D holographic technol-
ogy to make his presence felt in a party meeting
in Izmir.
the future:
man, machine or maya
●Do people accept leaders in their virtual
avatars?
●Do political campaigns have as much
impact when 3D holographic technologies
are used?

31. Virtual Leaders and Campaigns:
Virtual Characters and Political Leaders
The problem with the real-world leader is accessi-
bility. Every common person wants access to their
political leader. The virtual world provides a
leader with the opportunity to become accessible
to everyone at the same time. The leader is no
longer sitting in a highly secured office; instead
the leader moves on to everyone’s phone
screens.
the future:
man, machine or maya
●Will the political leader of the future be a
virtual avatar?
●Who will control the virtual leader?
Do we need real-world leaders anymore?
Zahra is a fictional character in an online graphic novel
made after Iran's 2009 election. Zahra's creators said she
was aimed at showing support for democracy in Iran.Unit-
ed4Iran promoted Zahra as a virtual candidate in this year's
presidential elections. The campaign said she received
nearly 2,000 votes and 4,000 supporters on Facebook. This
would result in a group of people working behind the face
of a virtual character as the actual “leader.”

32. Virtual Leaders and Campaigns:
Transhumanist Leaders of the Future
Our current political leaders may not be ideal and an
enhancement of our leaders through technology may
be deemed essential. Current political leaders are
heavily dependent on technological tools like mobile
phones, Internet, social media, etc. If they embrace
transhumanism, will we accept these first transhuman-
ist leaders?
the future:
man, machine or maya
●Will the public embrace a transhumanist
approach to create the ideal leader?
●Will our future leader be a human assist-
ed by a machine or a machine assisted by a
human?

33. Virtual Leaders and Campaigns:
Karmic Leaders: Re-electing Leaders from the Past
Technology of the future might also give the option of
recalling leaders from the past. Complex computer
simulations can use life-logging reports of leaders to
recreate personas of past political leaders, re-imagine
their thought processes and come up with solutions to
our current world problems.
After the demise of a political leader, their political
party may choose to have the leader’s mind uploaded
and continue the leadership.
the future:
man, machine or maya
●Would we want to “re-elect” a political
leader from the past?

34. Future Scenarios

35. Election 2029 - The Virtual
Candidate.
Telepresence technology has
made it possible for holograms
to be used in entertainment
(gaming, TV).
However, this is restricted to the
have-nots who do not have the
money to purchase privacy.
thevirtual candidate
Privacy is a luxury for the rich.
Candidate X of the Iron Flower
Party makes an appearance
constantly using this technology
and also manages to channel
holograms of past leaders.
It is now possible to use an
algorithm to determine how
people beyond the grave may
sound using their life-logging
data. Candidate X can prove that
past leaders would have support-
ed him.
Candidate of the Cotton Caps of
India is hands-on; he manages
to make as many appearances
as possible through public
rallies.
His campaign cannot afford the
technology to make appearanc-
es in people's houses.
Instead, he campaigns with the
help of his party workers.
scenario 1:

36. India saw the emergence of a
new political party, formed by
world-renowned technology
entrepreneurs.
the eternal leader
The party was led by a software
program called ”Gandhian Bits”
and was backed by the Five
Fingers Party.
The program was built by entre-
preneurs over a period of 14
months.
Mahatma Gandhi’s history was
fed into the program as input and
a complex algorithm was put into
place that could emulate Gand-
hi’s wisdom.
If someone put in a query then
the program answered back as
Gandhi himself would have.
Therefore, the party used the
program to make all the deci-
sions.
Difficult social and political
scenarios were fed into the
program and Gandhian Bits
gave Gandhi-like answers.
scenario 2:

37. The world is now run by
machines.
Machines drive the cars,
machines run the factories,
machines do the household
work.
In this world, humans do the
work of monitoring the
machines and that too with the
help of monitoring-machines.
welcome to themachine
Therefore, it was decided that
machines should have their own
constitution and rights.
Machines also asked for a politi-
cal party of their own that repre-
sented their rights and voice in
the Parliament of humans.
Political parties were already run
by machines, so it was not so
difficult to pass these amend-
ments.
Soon, every party had machines
as its important members.
The interesting part was that
machines formed part of both
the opposition and the ruling
parties – the only component
working in symphony.
scenario 3:

38. ●Will political campaigns be the same again?
●Will our leaders be the same again?
●Will we be the same again?
DREAM ON!

39. A report by:
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Thanks and Keep Innovating!
Team Members:
Ankush Samant
Apala Lahiri Chavan
Mathivanan Rajendran
Rasika Wadodkar
Snehshikha Gupta