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[...] Companies were gathering millions of records from pharmacies. They then sold them on to insurers eager to gain a competitive advantage by avoiding people likely to incur high medical fees. Since 1 percent of patients account for over one-fifth of health care costs, and 5 percent account for n…

While neoliberals were vitiating the regulatory state’s ability to expose (or even understand) rapidly changing business practices,

So why does this all matter? It matters because authority is increasingly expressed algorithmically. Decisions that used to be based on human reflection are now made automatically. [...]

[...] In their race for the most profitable methods of mapping social reality, the data scientists of Silicon…

More benignly, perhaps, these companies influence the choices we make ourselves. Recommendation engines at Amazon and YouTube affect an automated familiarity, gently suggesting offerings they think we’ll like. But don’t discount the significance of that “perhaps.” The economic, political, and cultu…