"Shoshana Zuboff, named "the true prophet of the information age" by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her time. Her seminal book In the Age of the Smart Machine foresaw the consequences of a then-unfolding era of computer technology. Now, three decades later she asks why the once-celebrated miracle of digital is turning into a nightmare. Zuboff tackles the social, political, business, personal, and technological meaning of "surveillance...

Implementing business intelligence systems and solutions can be a lengthy and expensive process. Organizations today, looking to lower costs and achieve a faster turnaround, may want to consider a guerrilla-like approach for their BI initiatives. In this report, Karl Boone, from the globally based IT consulting firm, PA Consulting Group, explores guerrilla business intelligence, a process for rapidly and cost-effectively implementing BI systems and...

Hidden from consumers, patient medical data has become a multibillion-dollar worldwide trade between our health-care providers, drug companies, and a complex web of middlemen. This great medical-data bazaar sells copies of our prescriptions, hospital records, insurance claims, blood-test results, and more, stripped of names but still containing identifiers such as year of birth, gender, and doctor. As computing grows ever more sophisticated, patient...

"40% of small business executives say payroll, benefits, compliance, and people management is "the worst" part of their jobs. Legacy HR practices are outdated and risky, and most of their software is clunky and siloed. The reality is that there is no longer a need for a traditional HR department. Almost all its responsibilities can be automated. SMBs need only an individual or small team to do what robots can't: manage employee experience and make...

"This book explains our way of thinking about how to move forward in digitalizing your business by taking small steps that yield observable, measurable results in the near term. Think of the book as a lantern shining a light on the path that will take you from digital laggard to digital leader. We explain how to pinpoint projects that are bite-sized and in synch with your highest business priorities and show how digital enablers who straddle the technology...

Provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of data science, walking the reader through the "data-analytic thinking" necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from collected data.

"A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller, These Truths. The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has...

For decades now, companies big and small have embraced Agile software development methods. The rationale here is straightforward: Why take one or two years to fully deploy a system, app, or website when so many things can and do go wrong? Why try to cook one big batch and boil the ocean? Why not cook many smaller batches? Double that when the world changes faster than ever. Brass tacks: It's no coincidence that methods such as Scrum have exploded...

"The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years--because a new computer system interprets any mistake as "failure to cooperate." In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to...