One of my big arguments in the book is that the tools that I’m talking about are more evolution than revolution. Virginia Eubanks: Often when we talk about new technologies, we talk about them as “disruptors”-things that shake up the system that we're in right now. Tanvi Misra: In your book, you lay out the troublesome history of poverty-management systems: from hellish “ poorhouses” to the scientific charity movement, the New Deal welfare apparatus to the automation of welfare. The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity. I recently spoke with Eubanks to about some of the main themes in her book. Eubanks examines these technologies, detailing the ways they can sometimes compromise the rights of the very people they supposedly help. Automated systems that gauge eligibility for Medicaid and food stamps, databases that match homeless people to resources, and statistical tools that detect cases of child abuse all hold the potential to revolutionize welfare programs. In it, Eubanks studies some of the seemingly neutral-and even well-meaning-technologies that promise to streamline the U.S. It’s this speech that Virginia Eubanks, an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, SUNY, comes back to at the end of her new book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.
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