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commented on If Then by Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore: If Then (2020, Liveright) 4 stars

The Simulmatics Corporation, launched during the Cold War, mined data, targeted voters, manipulated consumers, destabilized …

I've only read the intro and... this kind of writing about computer history gives me secondhand anxiety. Lots of very sweeping, definitive statements about the arc of tech in the 20th century, all neatly ending up in our present moment. She even calls the Simulmatics Corporation "Cold War America's Cambridge Analytica". That she does not define Cambridge Analytica (a rather obscure company if you don't pay attention to digital privacy news) tells you something about who this book is written for.

@hunterowens @christa Extremely gratified that Seth Mnookin, who I respect greatly, agrees with our assessment:

www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/books/review/if-then-jill-lepore.html

In particular I was thinking the same thing as him: he positions Simulmatics as a harbinger of doom but they were a complete failure of a company that couldn't deliver on almost anything they promised. The fact that she says simultaneously "these people were charlatans" (true) and "these people possessed the seed of 21st century data mining" (false) is weird. I would have preferred it if she kept it to a narrative of "these guys were grifters. So was Cambridge Analytica!" Because there is a lot of evidence that shows that CA and similar initiatives don't actually do what they claim to do. It could have been tied in to the adtech grift, especially since the company tried to pivot into adtech between elections!