If a video game designed to predict the presidential election is correct, then Donald Trump will take the White House. I played Stardock's'The Political Machine,' which forecasted Trump's shock win in 2016, to see what America could expect once the polls close Tuesday night. The simulation is a turn-based, map-trotting game -- not unlike'Risk' or any other tabletop game of political strategy -- except the board itself reacts to you and your opponent's moves based on historic turnout data, debate focus groups and more. The game's makers claim it'relies heavily on demographic issue patterns' like job, race, sex and income level to determine'what issues [voters] care about,' data the team has updated regularly ever since they created the first edition back in 2004. Initially, I found the game confusing, complicated and frankly dorky, but in time I was enthusiastically buying up local ads, setting up campaign offices and hiring'smear merchants' to spread devious rumors about my opponent: Donald J. Trump.

After that election, Laura Quinn moved mountains to raise the funds, assemble the team, and lead the overhaul of the Democratic Party's web, data, and analytics infrastructure. The Republicans were able to conduct national targeting in 2000 because they had built a consolidated voter file covering all 50 states. As a key part of the overhaul, and with just a few years of effort, Lina Brunton miraculously consolidated the Democratic Party's voter files, which had previously been controlled individually by the state parties. Between 2003 and 2008, the Democratic Party developed significant infrastructure on top of this standardized data substrate.

Sparks of electricity emanating from a Tesla coil at the Mendeleyevskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, January 24, 2016. Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from John Wasik's new book, "Lightning Strikes: Timeless Lessons in Creativity from the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla" (Sterling, 2016), slightly edited for this column. World-changing inventions made Nikola Tesla a celebrity in his own time, but something otherworldly makes him transcend his era and remain a perpetual beacon for our civilization 70 years after his death. He's now an immortal rock star, an icon for billionaires, cyberpunks, artists and "maker" inventors who are still fiddling with everyday machines in their basements and garages. Search engine designers, energy czars, musicians, artists and creators everywhere feel his influence.