How Data Happened
A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms
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3,0 • 1 оценка
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- 14,99 $
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“Fascinating.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
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 the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.
Expanding on the popular course they created at Columbia University, Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones illuminate the ways in which data has long been used as a tool and a weapon in arguing for what is true, as well as a means of rearranging or defending power. They explore how data was created and curated, as well as how new mathematical and computational techniques developed to contend with that data serve to shape people, ideas, society, military operations, and economies. Although technology and mathematics are at its heart, the story of data ultimately concerns an unstable game among states, corporations, and people. How were new technical and scientific capabilities developed; who supported, advanced, or funded these capabilities or transitions; and how did they change who could do what, from what, and to whom?
Wiggins and Jones focus on these questions as they trace data’s historical arc, and look to the future. By understanding the trajectory of data—where it has been and where it might yet go—Wiggins and Jones argue that we can understand how to bend it to ends that we collectively choose, with intentionality and purpose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
How did numbers become the "obvious way to understand and exercise power"? ask Columbia math professor Wiggins (Data Science in Context) and Columbia history professor Jones (Reckoning with Matter) in this edifying chronicle. Tracing the rise of data and statistics, the authors begin at the end of the 18th century as European states gained strength and sought to understand their power through tabulating the physical resources at their disposal. Early statistical methods, Wiggins and Jones contend, were developed to justify eugenics, with Francis Galton and other scientists attempting to quantify supposed racial differences. Other milestones include the invention of digital computation to break German cyphers during WWII, mid-century concerns about the federal government's collection of personal data, the commercialization of data by tech giants, and the proliferation of AI. The authors emphasize that mass data collection was not inevitable, and to ameliorate corporate and state abuses of privacy and power, Wiggins and Jones advocate for stronger regulation of the tech industry and collective action by its employees. Though some of the mathematical background may go over the heads of lay readers, the history is nonetheless trenchant and successfully illuminates the contingency of data's privileged place in modern decision-making. Incisive and thoroughly researched, this one's a winner.
