Technocracy
Government, or the aspiration to government, by technical experts applying measurement and engineering in place of political argument.
ConceptSources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 19 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Definition checked against Wikidata and the library's sources on Technocracy Inc.
- Wikidata, technocracy
A system in which government decisions are entrusted to unelected scientists and technicians.
What this check doesn’t establish
- The term's origin, usually credited to William H. Smyth in 1919, was not traced; coined_by is left empty rather than guessed.
- Technocracy Inc. is recorded separately as an Organisation; this record is the general idea.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
The general idea that experts, rather than elected politicians or markets, should run public affairs by technical method. The library's Technocracy Inc., OGAS and Cybersyn records are all instances.
Distinct from high-modernism, which describes a faith in planning, and from legibility, which describes what a state can see. Both are related; neither names the claim to rule by expertise.
In the essays
- Neo-Technocracy: Same Dream, Bigger Budget
Read the essay
Sources
- A Continental Hydrology
Discussed in
- How Not to Network a Nation
Discussed in
- Messianic Scientism: Technocracy, 1919–1960
Discussed in
- Technocracy Study Course
Discussed in
- The Energy Certificate
Discussed in
Ideas
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/concepts/technocracy.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5-5 on 2026-10-19