Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America (Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.11 (520 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 023116808X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-04-02 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
. His historical studies of communication technology, surveillance, and financial culture have appeared in Technology and Culture, New Media & Society, and several edited collections. Josh Lauer is an associate professor of media studies at the University of New Hampshire
Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern lifeyet we know almost nothing about them. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person's trustworthiness. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing. The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Creditworthy reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic "facts." It is fundamentally concerned withand determinesour social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person.. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion
(Richard R. Lauer has written a compelling history of how businesses assess creditworthiness, from nineteenth-century trade associations to contemporary data science mavens. (Frank Pasquale, University of Maryland)Clearly written, well researched, and wide ranging, Creditworthy provides a fresh account of the evolution of credit agencies in the United States. Josh Lauer has dug deep into the historical sources and marshaled his findings into a rich and cohesive narrative that encompasses business dynamics, social norms, technology, and regulation. John, Columbia University)At last! A book that drills down into the history of consumer credit-scoring and demonstrates its massive contribution to our daily experience of contemporary surveillance. (Publishers Weekly) . By combining insights from business history and cultural studies, Lauer probes the sometimes unsettling role o