IfThen, Jill Lepore
IfThen, Jill Lepore
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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If/Then
How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future

Author: Jill Lepore

Narrator: Jill Lepore

Unabridged: 10 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 09/15/2020


Synopsis

From the best-selling author of These Truths, an “exhilarating” (New York Times Book Review) account of the Cold War origins of our data-mad era.

The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge—decades before Facebook, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica.

Although Silicon Valley likes to imagine that it has no past, the scientists of Simulmatics are almost undoubtedly the long-dead ancestors of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk—or so argues Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, in this “hilarious, scathing, and sobering” (David Runciman) account of the origins of predictive analytics and behavioral data science.

About Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her many books include The Secret History of Wonder Woman, a national bestseller, and Book of Ages, a finalist for the National Book Award.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barry on October 19, 2020

Much more a rough history of the political landscape of the 1950s and 60s than of Simulatics. Makes you think now and then but then obliterates any useful thoughts with a mound of random tangents and pieces of trivia. The actual history of Simulatics is probably a third or less of the book. Pretty d......more

Goodreads review by Caren on June 17, 2020

Absolutely fascinating! Historian Jill Lepore has put her scholarly research skills to use and brought out of the archives the history of an obscure company, Simulmatics, that was the forerunner for today's Silicon Valley start-ups. The young men who rule Silicon Valley may believe they are unique a......more

Goodreads review by Bowman on October 16, 2020

Wow, not sure how a topic I’m DEEPLY interested in can be written about in a way that’s so boring. I have 80 pages left and not sure I’m going to finish. Its jsut too many names and unimportant details - I was expecting more of an interesting discussion about how predictions have altered our modern......more

Goodreads review by Donald on December 23, 2020

Jill Lepore is a very good writer. I realized this is the fourth of her books I have read. She is also an eminent American historian. This was a fascinating look at the early events leading up to the internet as we know it today. Because she is an historian she has lots of details and names that nee......more

Goodreads review by Ed on June 06, 2021

Long before political campaigns manipulated people with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, there was another company trying the same thing. Simulmatics built what they called a "People Machine" to try to predict how people would respond to various scenarios. They claimed success in helping JFK win th......more