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Writers Bloc and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall present a conversation with Jill Lepore, moderated by Dan Schnur.
Jill Lepore, in her thrilling new book, "If Then," explores the nature and range of The People Machine-- and its goal to predict behavior, whether commercial or political, and manipulate the outcome opinions and behavior as well. Lepore, staff writer for The New Yorker, and the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard, excavates a forgotten company whose legacy in predictive analytics is nothing short of the data-mad, algorithmic world we live in now, besieged by the next notification informing what we'll buy, what matters to us, and how we'll vote.
Lepore is joined by Dan Schnur, Professor at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and at the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. He is the founder of the USC/L.A. Times Statewide Poll.