Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was a decent book on how the digitization and blind adherence to programs within welfare, DCF(-like orgs), and other social programs has been disastrous to the poor, sometimes denying them life-saving funds at no fault of their own. This book talks strictly about public programs and nothing about the private landscape (comment, not criticism). While this book is well-written, Eubanks broadly denounces the technology and laments that we ever switched from family-assigned end-to-end social workers to algorithms and call centers. She does not talk much about how to improve the current technology and data-mining nor acknowledges that it is here to stay. While Eubanks does a great job pointing out the present and historical issues of technology, culture, the poor, and the welfare, more effort could have been made to discuss solutions. It was particularly interesting to me how f*cked up and faulty the digitization was.
Overall, I think this book is a great read and I would recommend others despite the lack of solution discussion.
Note: Listened to as audiobook, don’t believe I lost any quality this way.