Let Them Eat Efficiency

摘要

The past few years have seen an upsurge in warnings about biases embedded in technological tools. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Albany, joins this body of work. The book calls attention to ways that society has given short shrift to people who are in need, while raising important questions about whether new tools make people better or worse off than they would be otherwise. The three main chapters of the book comprise three case studies, each illustrating aspects of what Eubanks calls "the digital poorhouse." She begins by laying out the history of the (physical) poorhouse in the United States. These were facilities built as "homes of last resort" for indigent people, including abandoned children, older adults, and handicapped people. The first was built in Boston in 1662, and poorhouses became common in the 1800s. Eubanks describes many as having "horrid conditions," in which inhabitants suffered from neglect and abuse.