In order to legitimate and defend democratic politics under conditions of computational capital, my aim is to contribute a notion of what I am calling explanatory publics. I will explore what is at stake when we question the social and political effects of the disruptive technologies, networks and values that are hidden within the "black boxes" of computational systems. By "explanatory publics", I am gesturing to the need for frameworks of knowledge - whether social, political, technical, economic, or cultural - to be justified through a social right to explanation. That is, for a polity to be considered democratic, it must ensure that its citizens are able to develop a capacity for explanatory thought (in addition to other capacities), and, thereby, able to question ideas, practices, and institutions in society. This is to extend the notion of a public sphere where citizens are able to question ideas, practices, and institutions in society more generally. But it also adds the corollary that citizens can demand explanatory accounts from institutions and, crucially, the digital technologies that they use.

翻译：为了在计算资本条件下合法化并捍卫民主政治，我旨在提出一个称之为“解说性公众”的概念。我将探讨当我们质疑隐藏在计算系统“黑箱”中的颠覆性技术、网络及其价值观所引发的社会与政治影响时，究竟涉及哪些重大问题。通过“解说性公众”这一概念，我指向一种需求：即知识框架——无论是社会、政治、技术、经济还是文化层面的——都必须通过一种社会性的解释权来获得正当性。也就是说，一个政体若被视为民主的，就必须确保其公民能够发展出解说性思维的能力（以及其他能力），从而能够质疑社会中的观念、实践与制度。这是对公共领域概念的延伸——在公共领域中，公民普遍能够质疑社会观念、实践与制度。但同时，这也增加了一个推论：公民有权要求机构——尤其是他们所使用的数字技术——提供解说性说明。