![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Data can’t provide what poor people need, which is more resources. For the poor, she argues, government data and its abuses have imposed a new regime of surveillance, profiling, punishment, containment and exclusion, which she evocatively calls the “digital poorhouse.” While technology is often touted by researchers and policymakers as a way to deliver services to the poor more efficiently, Eubanks shows that more often, it worsens inequality. Virginia Eubanks begs to differ, with the authority to do so. We assume technology and the information it yields is making everyone’s life easier, freer and more comfortable. We’re seduced by similar smug, smart, supposed innovators hawking data’s potential to revolutionize health care and education. We tend to think that the smug, smart people who run companies like Google and Uber have some secret knowledge we even give them our personal information, uneasily, but ultimately with a bit of a shrug. Upper-middle-class professionals love data. AUTOMATING INEQUALITY How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor By Virginia Eubanks 260 pp. ![]()
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