MORE PRAISE FOR AUTOMATING INEQUALITY

“In this remarkable chronicle of ‘how the other half lives’ in the age of automation, Eubanks uncovers a new digital divide—a totalizing web of surveillance ensnaring our most marginalized communities. This powerful, sobering, and humane book exposes the dystopia of data-driven policy and urges us to create a more just society for all.”

—Alondra Nelson, author of The Social Life of DNA

“In this illuminating book, Eubanks shows us that in spite of cosmetic reforms, our policies for the disadvantaged remain dominated by the ancient credo of the poor law, obsessed with the exclusion and punishment of the neediest in our communities.”

—Frances Fox Piven, author of Regulating the Poor

“The single most important book about technology you will read this year. Today everyone is worrying about the Internet’s impact on democracy, but Eubanks shows that the problems facing us run much deeper than ‘fake news’—automated systems entrench social and economic inequality by design and undermine private and public welfare. Eubanks dives into history and reports from the trenches, helping us better understand the political and digital forces we are up against so we can effectively fight back.”

—Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

“Automating Inequality powerfully exposes how U.S. institutions, from law enforcement to health care to social services, increasingly punish people—especially people of color—for being poor. A must-read for everyone concerned about the modern tools of inequality in America.”

—Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and Shattered Bonds

“This book is for all of us: community leaders, scholars, lawyers, recipients of government assistance, and anyone alive whose survival depends upon a better understanding of how nations made wealthy by digital industries are using technology to create and maintain a permanent underclass. It is a book for our times.”

—Malkia A. Cyril, executive director and co-founder, Center for Media Justice—home of the Media Action Grassroots Network

“Automating Inequality is one of the most important recent books for understanding the social implications of information technology for marginalized populations in the US. As we begin discussing the potential for artificial intelligence to harm people, Eubanks’ work should be required reading.”

—Ethan Zuckerman, director, Center for Civic Media, MIT

“Startling and brilliant … As Eubanks makes crystal clear, automation coupled with the new technologies of ethical abandonment and instrumental efficiency threaten not only the lives of millions who are viewed as disposable but also democracy itself. If you want to understand how this digital nightmare is reaching deep into the institutions that attempt to regulate our lives, and how you can challenge it, this is a must read.”

—Henry Giroux, author of The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism

“Automating Inequality is a riveting, emotionally compelling story of vulnerable lives turned upside down by bad data, shoddy software, and bureaucrats too inept or corrupt to make things right. Everyone should read this book to learn how modern governance, all too often shrouded behind impenetrable legal and computer code, actually works.”

—Frank Pasquale, author of The Blackbox Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information

“Virginia Eubanks’ new book shocks us with her gripping stories of the emerging surveillance state. The ‘digital poorhouse’ increasingly extends its web, not so much to aid as to manage, discipline and punish the poor. Read this book and join with Eubanks in pushing back against the injustice it sustains.”

—Sanford Schram, author of Words of Welfare and Disciplining the Poor