By Virginia Eubanks
Ed. note: This essay was produced as part of New America’s annual conference, Exploring New America: What Drives Innovation Around the Country, held in Washington, D.C. on April 23 and 24.
Public services are becoming increasingly algorithmic, a reality that has spawned hyperbolic comparisons to RoboCop and Minority Report, enforcement droids and PreCogs. But the future of high-tech policy-making looks less like science fiction and more like Google’s PageRank algorithm.
For example, according to the Chicago Tribune, Robert McDaniel, a 22-year old Chicago resident, was surprised when District Commander Barbara West showed up at his West Side…
