The impact of technology on our choice environment: Gianluca Sgueo

In today’s episode, Brooke Struck, the research director at The Decision Lab, is joined by Gianluca Sgueo, associate researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and a New York University Global Professor (Florence). He holds administrative positions at the Sole24Ore Business School (Italy). In the governmental sphere, Professor Sgueo is a policy analyst in the European Parliamentary Research Service. He previously held high-level positions in the Italian government, including Head of Communications and Citizens’ Dialogue. His work examines the effects on democracy of topics such as gamification, civil society groups, and lobbying.

Specifically, we discuss:

• The relationship between technology and democracy
• Is there a trade-off between privacy and efficiency in governance?
• Estonia’s surprisingly progressive digital governance system
• Is technology in government inversely correlated with privacy and security?
• How technology influences our choice environments and our social interactions within them
• The shift from the information age to the reputation age—if we trust the source, we share
• Intelligent government design: How do we design governments to tackle the most pressing societal issues, efficiently and effectively?
• Using behavioral science principles to make the participatory channels of our democracy more engaging and attractive to users.