Suffrage is maintained, and responsible governance represents the total inclusion of all in the cost of order. The integration of television and other news media within computer networks enables polling engineers to reduce the time interval between question and answer, between action and reaction. The potential for manipulating opinions, in such conditions, is greatly amplified. This has many social and political repercussions. Increasingly, the politicians of western-style democracies owe their power base to meticulous computerized analyses of public opinion in any given arena.
Campaign managers tailor their responses in locally appropriate media.
During political campaigns the world over, tv stuffs its images into the electors' consciousness presented as statistical facts. All this is supposed to help you make up your mind. But when television and computers are integrated in a single feedback loop on urgent issues, that mind is made up for you. Your own mind may hardly be involved at all. It is one thing for polls to reflect, as accurately as possible, the opinions of a given community.