SimPolitics : America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers

(Cet évènement sera en anglais seulement.)

For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers, Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet.

In his talk, Dr. McKelvey will explore how computer models became fundamental to political practice—from winning elections to global affairs—and how we can imagine political futures as a computing problem.

À propos du conférencier

Fenwick McKelvey est professeur en politiques des technologies de l’information et de la communication au Département des études en communication de l’Université Concordia. Il est directeur adjoint de Milieux Institute et dirige Machine Agencies, et a été codirecteur de l’Institut d’IA appliquée. Ses recherches portent sur la politique numérique et les politiques publiques. Il est l’auteur de SimPolitics : America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026) et de Internet Daemons : Digital Communications Possessed (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), lauréat du prix Gertrude J. Robinson 2019. Il est aussi coauteur de The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (Peter Lang, 2012) avec Greg Elmer et Ganaele Langlois.