How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms

“Fascinating.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

From facial recognition—capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents—to automated decision systems that inform who gets loans and who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn’t just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the c...