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Frank Pasquale
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The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information 1st Edition

by Frank Pasquale (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 125 ratings
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Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior―silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do so―and to set limits on how big data affects our lives.

Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior.

Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0674368274
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0674368279
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Harvard University Press
  5. Publication date
    January 5, 2015
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.25 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  8. Print length
    320 pages
  9. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
125 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They appreciate the footnotes providing relevant supplementary material. The writing quality is described as good, with well-structured notes and bibliography.

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ReadabilityKnowledgeWriting quality
10 customers mention "Readability"10 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe it as an important read that provides valuable information about the dangers of Internet giants.

"...A gripping read, yes, but most especially an important one to educate us about precisely what we are up against in our systems driven society." Read more

"...All in all - it is a good book, highlighting many problems stemming from obscure applications of Big Data, combined with untrammeled tech and..." Read more

"...It's an excellent book to alert everyone as to the dangers of the Internet giants' ascension over the world." Read more

"This was an interesting read with some clear insight into the problems behind big data that I think most people intuit exists...." Read more

7 customers mention "Knowledge"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book informative and well-researched. They appreciate the footnotes providing relevant supplementary material. The book details how concentrated power is held in the hands of a few. The basic ideas are interesting and important for anyone working on technology. The thorough examination of different fields that society is exposed to is serious and philosophically rich.

"...But Pasquale does not leave readers in despair. With serious wisdom and with philosophical richness, the book lays out an agenda to bring our black..." Read more

"...them here, let me just assure you that footnotes provide a lot of relevant supplementary material. However, the writing style is a bit dry...." Read more

"...well with notes that should help the reader identify and locate the proper source material." Read more

"...Well written and highly documented. It's too bad there are not more people reading this, particularly people who could do something about it." Read more

3 customers mention "Writing quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's writing quality. They find it well-written, with helpful notes and a bibliography. The book is structured well with good documentation.

"...It would have been nice to have a bibliography, but the book is laid out well with notes that should help the reader identify and locate the proper..." Read more

"...Well written and highly documented. It's too bad there are not more people reading this, particularly people who could do something about it." Read more

"This is a must read! A serious book, well documented and well structured...." Read more

Very good book
5 out of 5 stars
Very good book
This book introduces readers to one of the most important problems given their consequences of modern life: privacy.It shows how large corporations (including governments) increasingly capture data of the individual citizen, while there is an increasingly opacity of their behavior.Really recommended
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Danielle Keats Citron
    5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and important guide to hidden systems making decisions about us and what we ought to do about it
    Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Frank Pasquale's book is the definitive account of public and private algorithmic systems making decisions about us and for us. The book brilliantly details just how much concentrated power lay in the hands of search engines, data brokers, the NSA, and more. As the Black Box Society exposes, public and private entities are busy sorting, scoring, steering, categorizing, and informing us without our having a clue. The explanation of our current predicament is carefully and vividly drawn (good luck putting down the book once you have started). The book helps us understand how little current law can do to protect against abuses of power. But Pasquale does not leave readers in despair. With serious wisdom and with philosophical richness, the book lays out an agenda to bring our black box society out of the shadows and offers tools to limit its reach. It's eminently practical too, relying on workable regulatory structures already in place. A gripping read, yes, but most especially an important one to educate us about precisely what we are up against in our systems driven society.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Jan Dziekan
    4.0 out of 5 stars Makes you think
    Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2019
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    The eponymous black box refers to secretive algorithm-aided mechanisms by which powerful companies make their decisions. Internet-enabled massive data collection allows tech giants to utilize computers in decision-making which influences our lives in more and more ways. We are constantly scrutinized, evaluated - priced, even - at every occasion our mundane activities allow. Each company worth its salt tries to build profiles of its clients, and many specialise in collation and brokerage of data to sell their machine-generated opinions on every person on the globe. Those scores are then used to judge whether we are worthy of receiving a credit, insurance, a job… So prevalent are those grades, yet we know so little on how they are calculated - this allows Frank Pasquale to posit that whole societies play along “black box” rules. Opacity is beneficial only to a minority of financiers and tech entrepreneurs, while the masses live unaware of rules by which their lives are played, without recourse to biased, uninformed, or sloppy verdicts.

    The picture looks bleak, and the author brings many compelling examples illustrating his view. Out of many fields transformed by Big Data, this book focuses on reputation, search and finance. I believe there is no point in reiterating them here, let me just assure you that footnotes provide a lot of relevant supplementary material. However, the writing style is a bit dry. Perhaps it is the nature of the topic at hand - opaque, complicated, requiring knowledge of a slew of details - which makes it hard to weave a captivating narrative? I think I have enjoyed “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil a bit more in that regard. But, by no means I want to dismiss the work of Frank Pasquale - I believe he makes a correct diagnosis. Algorithmic effectiveness (driven by greed), engineered complexity, lack of oversight, little responsibility (especially in the case of organizations “too big to fail”) - they form a powerful combination of incentives to increase societal divides and promote unfairness.

    Where I would contend with the author is the matter of privacy. Frank opposes mass encryption, arguing that it leads to “the NSA blinded to real terrorist plots”. I am on Bruce Schneier’s side, who advocates consumer-friendly encryption tools to avoid surveillance - which leads to healthier societies. NSA can stick to methods which don’t require dragnets; Internet just made it all too easy and tempting - not only for agencies but for the companies criticized in “The Black Box Society” as well. Privacy is an inherent human right; nowadays it is only the powerful firms who are most successful in achieving it.

    All in all - it is a good book, highlighting many problems stemming from obscure applications of Big Data, combined with untrammeled tech and finance sector dominance.
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  • S. Ferguson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Uncovering the bane of secrecy
    Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This is the first book I have found that succeeds in understanding the tragic crisis of our present times from the perspective of digital technology. Pasquale is a Professor of Law and he approaches the power of secrecy in what many of us have come to call 'the matrix' through the legal system. The legal view is practical as inevitably it will be real-world law that releases us from the tyranny of massive data collection going on every day in each of our lives. We live in the Internet, like it or not.

    Now is the time for us to rethink our euphoria with technology. As Frank Pasquale says, there can be no relationship of trust with a 'black box' and Silicon Valley's top managers are not great sages — in fact they "hide behind corporate operations so covert that their actual contributions are hard to assess...why all the secrecy?" Pasquale states that the focus of his book is, "How has secrecy become so important to industries ranging from Wall Street to Silicon Valley?"

    As you now know, your online behaviors, from banking to shopping to searching for anything including health information, and your cell phone use are as Pasquale says, "...fed into databases and assembled into profiles of unprecedented depth and specificity." This information is then sold to companies you know nothing about and used to market to you, to evaluate your potential to get a job, a mortgage, a loan, rental, and many other dreams you may have that could be denied to you because of collected data you know nothing about. There is no such thing as a 'free' App — all Apps are Trojan Horses and come with what I call cooties that stick in your computer and allow your clicks, your personal choices to be amassed as data.

    "The tendency towards psychological collectivism does not have man's welfare as its end. It is designed for his exploitation." - Jacques Ellul

    Perhaps the most egregious example of the 'black box' take over is in the area of finance. It was algorithms that allowed the subprime mortgage collapse to destroy the lives of so many people. Algorithms have expanded exponentially into every aspect of banking, bonds and stock markets, with ever increasing mazes of derivatives, CDOs collateralized debt obligations, now in the trillions of dollars. Humans no longer trade global markets, as algorithms move stocks, commodities, and currencies around the planet in seconds. I'm sure you've heard of HFT, high frequency trading, which is a high-tech form of front-running. A 'flash-crash' can take markets down a thousand points in a few seconds. Perhaps 'dark pools' are unfamiliar, but these dark pool 'bots' are "artificially intelligent systems that execute trades in milliseconds and use the cover of darkness to outmaneuver their creators, ultimately hijacking the global markets from human control and pushing the entire system toward a global meltdown that could happen in seconds." [Scott Patterson]

    Greed is not Good! Because there is so much money involved, these genius quant creators of algorithms are constantly refining and expanding the technologies that now invade every aspect of our lives. Therefore there can be no 'transparency' as regulators struggle to even understand an ever-changing field created by minds digitally oriented and advanced beyond most. The private companies and corporations pay these digital geniuses far more money than the government agencies that are supposed to protect the public, very often the stealing the best from government agencies, luring them with hugely obscene salaries. So the innovators are running the game leaving the rest of us, even those who are paid to protect us, clueless in the dark and vulnerable.

    As Pasquale says, "Secret algorithms — obscured by a triple layer of technical complexity, secrecy, and 'economic espionage' laws that can land would-be whistle-blowers in prison — still prevent us from understanding what is truly going on in many major financial firms." Regarding the safety of the banking system, my local small town banker admitted to me privately, "They haven't fixed anything!"

    The people who have access to secret technology are way ahead of the rest of us. Some have called this the 'breakaway civilization'. Part of this secret technology is what Pasquale is calling "secret algorithms — obscured by a triple layer of technical complexity, secrecy, and 'economic espionage' laws that can land would-be whistle-blowers in prison still prevent us from understanding" which lets face it, prevents us from understanding much of anything about the veiled secretive world we are now forced to inhabit.

    Pasquale reports Eric Schmidt of Google saying he wants Google users the be able to ask it, 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?' This is beyond creepy and moving into the domain of a totalitarian invasion of the human heart and psyche. Power corrupts and erodes human integrity in myriad ways. The power to obfuscate these technologies, to use them for their own profit; to manipulate people, markets, global finance — this kind of power has never been seen on this planet in written history, the last 6000 years. This super power for what has become a Superclass has made the elite insane, insane with greed. Only insane men and woman would destroy the middle class, which is a necessity for a successful democracy. And in the largest transference of wealth in history, confiscate 90% of the wealth of the planet for themselves, the 1%. That's irresponsible madness.

    Greed makes people blind, delusional, they lose their moral-compass in an obsession to get what they want anyway the can. One popular expression of this with the arrogant who now consider themselves to be masters of the universe is the phrase, "If you're not doing anything, get out of my way!" They call us 'eaters' and appear to have lost all respect for the so called common man, those of us who are not members of the new Superclass, "an international upper class of people whose economic interests had more in common with each other than with the majority of people who share their nationality. [D. Rothkopf]" Nation states are finished. It's a global corporate state in their eyes.

    The men & women who wield the power of these secret technologies are now taking over the planet under the guise of what is called 'globalization' which is supposed to benefit mankind. However globalization "undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty. [D. Rothkopf]" And even the most uniformed and gullible have now understood that 'globalization' only benefits the 1% and their minions the vampire squid.

    Take the Trans Pacific Partnership, the TPP for example. No one is allowed to read this trade agreement, which commondreams.org says should never be called a trade agreement — because the TPP is "a corporate/investor rights agreement...that extends patents, copyrights and other monopolies so investors can collect 'rents' (and) elevates corporations and corporate profits above the level of government." You can be sued for breaking corporate laws you know nothing about. We are watching our lives and the future turned into a global technological corporate authoritarian empire that every minute of the day secretly tracks us in vast databases stored around the planet — our home planet that is being polluted and poisoned as global corporations extract her resources.

    With promises of freedom and propaganda, the techno-wizards that created the Internet, the new self-styled masters of the universe have seduced us into a complacency — mesmerized by the latest toxic doo-dah-toys that blind us to the fact that with every hypnotic click, we are spinning out our own spiders web that entraps our consciousness, awareness and intelligence, a stealth 'net' that without our knowledge confines our thoughts in the dictates of the invisible elite and enslaves us.

    Is the idea of responsible government oversight now impossible? Who is in control — the corporations with their political dynasties and sock-puppet minions? The future of the individual, you and me, is solely in our own hands. I doubt that people who are qualified, and not mad with greed, can anytime soon usefully moderate this rabid advance of globalization and pernicious data collection. There have always been these elites, such as the Robber Barons of the 1880s and 90s — "tycoons of the Gilded Age were also unfettered by institutions that might have regulated the rough-and-tumble business that brought so much wealth to the fortunate few. [D. Rothkopf]"
    We all know that our world is rapidly changing. Are we simply in a transition stage moving from an Industrial Age to a Technological Era? Some say we should just adapt. Or are we in the early stages of an Orwellian global authoritarian state the likes of which this planet has never before experienced.

    The advances in technology since the 1940s are beyond exponential! They are flat out incredible, meaning not believable, unless. Are we really so brilliant that we could achieve all this in such a short time? So what are they really hiding? Can it be that these secret technologies are the ill-gotten gains from the tyrant ETs — who have little or no interest in the well being of planet Earth and humankind?
    13 people found this helpful
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  • Thoughtworks
    5.0 out of 5 stars There are a few good critics of the technology elitists who are emerging
    Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2016
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    There are a few good critics of the technology elitists who are emerging. Nicholas Carr and Evgeny Morozov are excellent (and Neil Postman's predictions in his books of late last century, like Technopoly and Amusing Ourselves To Death). I have to say, Frank Paquale earns his place alongside them in this book. He not only points out some things that others have not mentioned, but he has a way of making you feel like he is one of us, rather than a social critic. It's an excellent book to alert everyone as to the dangers of the Internet giants' ascension over the world.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Tatiana Sharatova
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good source of information.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2021
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    Amazing book👍🏻
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  • antonio
    5.0 out of 5 stars E' un regalo a mio figlio per la laurea
    Reviewed in Italy on February 1, 2020
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    E' un regalo a mio figlio per la laurea
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  • Rpp
    3.0 out of 5 stars Some good points, hard to read
    Reviewed in Germany on March 30, 2019
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    The writers style makes the book hard to read, wasn't necessary. Some good points though.
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  • Amaan
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing read! Opens your eyes to the world in ...
    Reviewed in Canada on October 7, 2016
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    Amazing read! Opens your eyes to the world in quite an interesting way. Language was a little complex for an average reader, but I am no average reader!
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  • MerGM
    3.0 out of 5 stars Un poco sensacionalista
    Reviewed in Spain on August 10, 2015
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    Demasiado centrado en EEUU. En ocasiones los argumentos que presenta y los ejemplos parecen grandes titulares sensacionalistas y se echa en falta que entre en detalle a los estudios y métodos que critica.
    Presenta a los que trabajamos en el tema como si fuéramos el gran Satán. Parece que se olvida que los que realizamos estas actividades no somos máquinas, si no personas de carne y hueso.
    Eso si, recomiendo su lectura como reflexión del impacto de esas metodologías.
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