000			01918cam a2200289Mi 4500
001			on1198554423
003			OCoLC
007			ta
008			201216s2020 enka e 001 0 eng
020			_a9781529386165 (pbk.)
020			_a1529386160 (pbk.)
020			_a9781631496103 (hbk)
020			_a1631496107 (hbk)
035			_a(OCoLC)1198554423
050			_aQA76.9.D343 _bL47 2020
100	1		_aLepore, Jill, _d1966-
245	1	0	_aIf then : _bhow one data company invented the future / _cJill Lepore.
260			_aLondon : _bJohn Murray, _c2020.
300			_axii, 415 p. : _bill., port.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520			_aThe Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and direct human behavior, deploying their "People Machine" from New York, Cambridge, and Saigon for clients that included John Kennedy's presidential campaign, the New York Times, Young & Rubicam, and, during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defence. Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, unearthed from the archives the almost unbelievable story of this long-vanished corporation, and of the women hidden behind it. In the 1950s and 1960s, Lepore argues, Simulmatics invented the future by building the machine in which the world now finds itself trapped and tormented, algorithm by algorithm.
610	2	4	_aSimulmatics Corporation.
650		4	_aData mining.
650		4	_aAlgorithms.
650		4	_aTechnology _xSocial aspects _xHistory.
942			_2lcc _cBK
999			_c321 _d321