We are joined by Lee McGuigan — author of Selling the American People — to discuss the origins of advertising / adtech and how the ad industry has been deeply entangled with operations research and information technology since the 1940s, way longer than the usual stories of when advertising and technology joined together. As Lee’s work shows, the ad industry is a perfect case study for better understanding how the science / ideology of (algorithmic) optimization broke free from its confines in military strategy or economic planning and became a set of universal methods and solutions that should be applied everywhere.

••• Lee’s book – Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545440/selling-the-american-people/ ‘

••• Follow Lee – https://twitter.com/ljamesmcguigan

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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)