Collect Data, Influence Votes: 'If Then' Traces The Genesis Of Data-Driven Politics

A collection of current and past presidential advertising materials hang on a wall in November in the visitor center of the New Hampshire State House in Concord, N.H. A collection of current and past presidential advertising materials hang on a wall in November in the visitor center of the New Hampshire State House in Concord, N.H. Decades before Google or Facebook existed, a Madison Avenue advertising man started a company called Simulmatics based on a then-revolutionary method of using computers to forecast how people would behave. Formed in 1959, Simulmatics charged clients a hefty fee to access its "people machine" -- a computer program that drew on polling information and behavioral science to predict mathematically the impact of an advertising pitch or political message. The New Yorker's Jill Lepore writes about Simulmatics in her new book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.