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Title details for Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks - Available

Automating Inequality

How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

by Virginia Eubanks
Teri Schnaubelt
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps, and cash benefits in three years—because a new computer system interprets any mistake as "failure to cooperate." In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect.
Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems—rather than humans—control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor.
In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lies dying, to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile.
The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values.
This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 26, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781977394422
      • File size: 224485 KB
      • Duration: 07:47:40

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Teri Schnaubelt's narration can be a bit too breathy and elongated, adding a bit more melodrama than feels right for this audiobook. Eubanks examines how computer automation increasingly operates as a mechanism to play "gotcha"--even when there is nothing to get. While no one loves a bureaucracy, Eubanks reports that people are being increasingly challenged and undermined by how algorithms are making decisions and evaluating them, particularly regarding criminal justice, social welfare, and educational opportunities. While Eubanks's prose should be presented with empathy and nuance, Schnaubelt's tone comes across as a bit haughty and condescending. The mismatch of author and narrator weakens an important contemplation on the power of computers in our contemporary world. L.E. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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