Here is another sociological contribution to critical studies of the digital age. In this book, Eubanks uses three case studies of reconfiguration of social services to digital automation - what she dubs the "digital poorhouse" and their consequences. So, this book takes its place with Cathy O'Neill's Weapons of Math Destruction and David Lyon's framework of the surveillance society. In all three cases, digital systems serve as diversion (pushing people off social services), managing scarcity and criminalizing the poor, and using predictive analytics (based in invalid data and modeling) assess people based on potential future behavior. In addition, under the guise of technological objectivity - after all, algorithms are held to have no bias - socio-economic and political issues are reduced to technical problems to be solved with more intrusive data. But there is no salvation by software for socio-economic problems such as racism, poverty, or lack of affordable housing. This is the now-familiar trope of disruption that whose deployment on the poor no other social class would tolerate.
In other words, this book is as much about social problems and policies as it is about technology. The last chapter on what is to be done is not the best of the book (hence my 4-star), but the case studies and more general framework are well worth anyone's time.
This book also contains a warning: the use of data tools will not stay confined to the poor. Sooner or later, we will all be subjected to the "disruption" brought forth by data-driven management, from the public or the private sectors.