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I had known that ancient greeks used random selection (sortition) to elect people to political office, but I was curious how they did it 1/
It turns out, how they did it is pretty incredible. They had a randomization machine called the kleroterion. 2/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroteri… 
Every person who wanted to be chosen would have a pinakion, a usb-stick-shaped plate made of wood or bronze, that had their personal ID 3/
The pinakia were inserted into the slots, then dice were put into a tube on the left hand side, where they would come out one by one. 4/
The dice would determine which slots were chosen, and who could be sent home. 5/
This is only one of a number of technical advances that made Athenian democracy possible. It's truly mind-blowing. 6/
This article on the info tech of Athenian democracy is the best thing I've read in months alamut.com/subj/artiface/… 7/
Some other tech:
Water clocks were used to keep speeches to the exact time allowed, and were publicly verifiable 8/
Water clocks were used to keep speeches to the exact time allowed, and were publicly verifiable 8/
Jurors voted using two different disks, placed their choice in a closed bin and the other in a discard bin. Your hand provided privacy. 9/
They had authentication via possession of one half of a token, which is theoretically similar to public and private keys 10/
I'm sure they had many other technical innovations that have been lost to history. Wood decayed, bronze was melted down and reused. 11/
Athenian democracy would not have been possible without some way to manage the vast amounts of information needed to run it. 12/
Likewise, our current technology might allow us to have previously impossible forms of government. I'm excited to find out how. :) End.
