Virginia Eubanks

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“We all live in the digital poorhouse. We have always lived in the world we built for the poor. We create a society that has no use for the disabled or the elderly, and then are cast aside when we are hurt or grow old. We measure human worth based only on the ability to earn a wage, and suffer in a world that undervalues care and community. We base our economy on exploiting the labor of racial and ethnic minorities, and watch lasting inequities snuff out human potential. We see the world as inevitably riven by bloody competition and are left unable to recognize the many ways we cooperate and lift each other up.

But only the poor lived in the common dorms of the county poorhouse. Only the poor were put under the diagnostic microscope of scientific clarity. Today, we all live among the digital traps we have laid for the destitute.”

― Virginia Eubanks

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“When automated decision-making tools are not built to explicitly dismantle structural inequities, their speed and scale intensify them.”

― Virginia Eubanks

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“Our national journey from the county poorhouse of the nineteenth century to the digital poorhouse today reveals a remarkably durable debate between those who wish to eliminate and alleviate poverty and those who blame, imprison, and punish the poor.”

― Virginia Eubanks

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“The digital poorhouse is persistent. Once they scale up, digital systems can be remarkably hard to decommission. Think, for example, about what might happen if the world learned about a gross violation of trust at a large data company like Google.”

― Virginia Eubanks