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

A sweeping history of data and its technical, political, and ethical impact on our world.

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 census enshrined in the US Constitution to th...