
If/Then
How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
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Narrated by:
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Jill Lepore
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By:
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Jill Lepore
A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic 21st century, from the author of the acclaimed international best seller 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 that 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 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.
©2020 Jill Lepore (P)2020 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















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Good narration
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Enthusiastically recommend
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A defense of our humanity
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Jill Lepore’s take on anything is worth paying attention to.
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Start with “A Mind At Play: How Claude Shannon Started The Information Age”
Fascinating and more included below
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History not as entertainment, but guide to our common humanity and progress- read with occasional emotion that can hit a bit harsh, at least to my wife ;-)
This should be read and understood by all!
Thank You Jill!
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About her voice.
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Horrible narration
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Remembering
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exceptional
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