Why read The Rise of the Computer State?

Book cover of The Rise of the Computer State: The Threat to Our Freedoms, Our Ethics and Our Democratic Process

Book description

The Rise of the Computer State is a comprehensive examination of the ways that computers and massive databases are enabling the nation’s corporations and law enforcement agencies to steadily erode our privacy and manipulate and control the American people. This book was written in 1983 as a warning. Today it…

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Personal computers

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Political

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Rise of the Computer State as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Patrick D. Anderson

Author

I read this book because I studied the cypherpunks, and I found Burnham’s work cited in one of the cypherpunk’s essays. It was published in 1983, but I felt like it could have been published today. I was met with surprises on every page. I had to rethink the nature of surveillance itself.

Written in the wake of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s, Burnham taught me that the computerization of society—with its increasingly networked systems and exponentially growing databases—is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and individual rights.

Even everyday things we now take for granted, like direct deposit and…

From Patrick's list on The best books on the history and techniques of surveillance in the United States.