When reading the introduction to this excerpt, I was skeptical that the processes created to make solving society’s problems more efficient could work. Specifically, I was surprised that the automated process to determine which children would be most at risk for abuse could, for the lack of a better word, exist. As Eubanks laid out so eloquently in her narratives, these issues require a solution beyond a technological one. If created with true equality and equity in mind, algorithms in social services / public services provide a band aid solution at most. In addition, it was extremely disheartening to learn that it was possible for clients to be extremely vulnerable based on the VI-SPDAT (Vulnerability Index – Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool) to the point where they would be ideal to be housed, but require a lot of social services that the government could not provide in order to stay in that housing based on what the landlords wanted out of tenants. I would think it makes sense to put the folks who need the least social services into homes first, because it seems they would need the least support to be housed, which meant that fewer people would be returning to the streets and entering the system. Eubanks writes “But in the absence of sufficient public investment in building or repurposing housing, coordinated entry is a system for managing homelessness, not solving it” (109). People are cycled through the system and because this information is shared with the LAPS, they are also cycled through the criminal justice system.

In thinking about these programs, I would like to discuss the idea of opting out. Those who are privileged enough to not need these programs are fortunate to not be tracked in the same way these folks are. The idea of opting out in general is only a viable option to those who do not depend on various technologies, whether it is the VI-SPDAT or something like Facebook – a tool many freelancers depend on to find events. How can we build technologies that assist people without tracking them? What can we do with the technologies that track us and make decisions about us that affect our lives, in ways that we are unaware?

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