Jill Lepore, a renowned Harvard professor and bestselling author, has written a biography of Simulmatics --- a corporation that, she argues, was “the missing link in the history of technology,” which “helped invent a future obsessed with the future, and yet unable to improve it.”

The company, started in 1959 by computer geeks and men from Madison Avenue, initially harnessed data in the service of politics, though eventually it boasted a client list that included JFK, The New York Times and the Department of Defense. Over its short history (the company went bankrupt in 1970), its powerful IBM computers used data to track --- and influence --- everything from elections to race riots, counterinsurgencies and consumers’ purchasing habits. Decades before Facebook, it tried to manipulate the beliefs of voters, consumers and entire countries, including Vietnam. And, like Mark Zuckerberg, its founders professed to believe that they were helping humanity.

"What makes IF THEN so powerful is the implicit analogy between the ’60s and today --- not just because of social upheavals, but because ordinary citizens are being manipulated now, as they were then, by the technology that affords its overseers the power of 'perfect persuasion.'"

Lepore uses the company and its principals (Daniel Patrick Moynihan was on the payroll for a while) as an entry point to the 1960s, when computers, the internet and even email were breaking out of the confines of academia. Many of the issues facing society in those years, from protests over the Vietnam War to racial unrest and fears of government’s intrusion on individuals’ privacy, are seen through the prism of those Simulmatics executives.

Ultimately, as its chief executive unraveled and clients complained of shoddy research and billing discrepancies, some of the principals went off to new ventures, leaving behind the shell of a once-influential company. While writing an article about polling in 2015, Lepore discovered a trove of documents at MIT, where several Simulmatics founders had taught, and began unraveling the threads of their story. It’s debatable if the individuals and their families who lived through the rise and fall of this company enhance the book’s narrative, but they are also stand-ins for families torn apart by a decade of protests, riots and political unrest.

What makes IF THEN so powerful is the implicit analogy between the ’60s and today --- not just because of social upheavals, but because ordinary citizens are being manipulated now, as they were then, by the technology that affords its overseers the power of “perfect persuasion.”