Safiya U. Noble, Ph.D.

Safiya U. Noble, Ph.D.

 

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“Noble makes a strong case that present technologies and search engines are not just imperfect, but they enact actual harm to people and communities.”

Popmatters.com

“[P]resents convincing evidence of the need for closer scrutiny and regulation of search engine[s]….A thought-provoking, well-researched work….”

Library Journal

“Noble argues…that the web is …a machine of oppression…[Her] central insight – that nothing about internet search and retrieval is political neutral – is made…through the accumulation of alarming and disturbing examples.  [She] makes a compelling case that pervasive racism online inflames racist violence IRL.”

Los Angeles Review of Books

“Safiya Noble’s compelling and accessible book is an impressive survey of the impact of search and other algorithms on our understandings of racial and gender identity. Her study raises crucial questions regarding the power and control of algorithms, and is essential reading for understanding the way media works in the contemporary moment.”

—Sarah Banet-Weiser, Author of Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture

“Noble demolishes the popular assumption that Google is a values-free tool with no agenda…She astutely questions the wisdom of turning so much of our data and intellectual capital over to a corporate monopoly….Noble’s study should prompt some soul-searching about our reliance on commercial search engines and about digital social equity.”

STARRED Booklist

“Safiya Noble has produced an outstanding book that raises clear alarms about the ways Google quietly shapes our lives, minds, and attitudes. Noble writes with urgency and clarity. This book is essential for anyone hoping to understand our current information ecosystem.”

—Siva Vaidhyanathan, Author of The Googlization of Everything — and Why We Should Worry

“A distressing account of algorithms run amok.”

Kirkus Reviews

Book Review in Feminist Formations

Book Review in Feminist Formations

View Citation Reviewed by: Angharad N. Valdivia (bio) Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble. New York: New York University Press, 2018, 227 pp., $89.00 hardcover, $25.20 paper. What happens when you type "black girls …" in...

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Financial Times

Financial Times

© Getty Cordelia Fine MARCH 6, 2018 Non-Fiction Coded prejudice: how algorithms fuel injustice Two new books highlight the ways in which technology is hurting minorities and the poor Digital tools are often hailed as transparent and democratising “disrupters”. Two new...

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New York Journal of Books

New York Journal of Books

Reviewed by: Robert Fantina In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble clearly explains how search engines, used by billions daily, are not an innocent, neutral vehicle by which to search for information. They are not benign; they are powered by programmers,...

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LA Review of Books Ideologies of Boring Things: The Internet and Infrastructures of Race

LA Review of Books Ideologies of Boring Things: The Internet and Infrastructures of Race

INFRASTRUCTURE IS CREATED by people and therefore embeds and reflects the values of the people who create it. This is a fundamental insight in the study of what information studies scholar Susan Leigh Star has called “boring things”: phone books, medical coding manuals, the Dewey Decimal System. Such systems are also usually invisible as long as they work. We rarely think about sewer pipes unless they’re backing up into our houses, and the patterns of air traffic don’t matter unless they’re disrupted by weather.

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