More than a decade ago, I began to engage in a series of wonderful philosophical discussions with Julio Frenk (then the president of the University of Miami, now the chancellor of UCLA). From our talks an idea emerged, a fusion of computing, technology, political systems, philosophy, economics, and governance. We manifested some of the thinking in Project Alexandria (2018) and with a Knight Foundation Grant (2022): Conversations on the Future of Democracy, Social Media, and Artificial Intelligence in the Americas.

I was planning to go back to school and work on a PhD in Philosophy on this thesis—what we called “computational democracy”—and was greatly discouraged by a philosophy professor at one of the schools where I applied: “Go build it, don’t be a philosopher; this is too important.” So I did, and I founded SynthBee with the core idea that we would be the rebel alliance, the Jedi (not the Sith) and a north star in the ideals of computational democracy.

What President Frenk and I conceived was more than a philosophy. It was architecture, system design, use, and operations of certain types of computing and intelligence systems manifested from the idea of personal freedoms. The idea of computational democracy in many ways reflected the ideals of liberty and the checks and balances of a well-run democracy.

Looking back, the Bay Area of the late 1960s and 1970s was a hotbed of these ideals, in many ways birthing a mix of music, film, creativity, and technology. Stewart Brand’s DIY Whole Earth Catalog (which influenced the internet and the web), the Homebrew Computer Club, and the birth of personal computing with the Apple I were all markers of this fusion of freedom, democracy, and computing.

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