Bibliograph

If then, how the Simulmatics Corporation invented the future, Jill Lepore

Type

Label

If then, how the Simulmatics Corporation invented the future, Jill Lepore

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-390) and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

If then

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1191844059

Responsibility statement

Jill Lepore

Sub title

how the Simulmatics Corporation invented the future

Summary

"A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller, These Truths. The 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 Defense. 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"--, Provided by publisher

Classification