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Data Empire

How information shaped human history
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Data Empire

By: Roopika Risam
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

From clay tablets to the algorithmic state, this groundbreaking 11,000 year history argues that information has always been the seed of power. Perfect for readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

Long before writing existed, at the dawn of civilisation in Mesopotamia, rulers pressed marks into clay to keep track of land, people and grain. To rule, they had to keep count. It is no accident, then, that the first written name in human history was neither a god nor a king, but an accountant.

As ships and navigation expanded our horizons, a new age of European empires took control of more than 80 per cent of the world’s surface, using censuses, maps and ledgers to decide who belonged, who owed, and who could be sacrificed. Today, we live in the third great era, when trading our information for access can feel harmless or inevitable – yet from targeted advertising to border policing and mass surveillance, data shapes the course of our lives.

Drawing on stories from ancient cave markings and knotted strings to colonial record-keeping and the algorithmic state, Data Empire reveals how data has always been the seed of power: a technology of control that has shaped civilizations and upheld empires. Provocative, humane and sweeping in scope, it asks us to recognise the power data has always held – and to imagine what resistance looks like in an age defined by it, so that we might remake the modern world for the benefit of all.

© Roopika Risam 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 History History & Culture Social Sciences Technology & Society World

Critic reviews

From the earliest inscriptions, through the record-keeping of the Han dynasty or the Domesday book, to the modern world of the internet and AI, Risam demonstrates how data has both controlled and liberated us and so moulded the human story. Breathtaking in its scope and enormously fulfilling in its depth, this book is profoundly fascinating. (Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of Being Human)
This brilliant, readable book offers a striking new historical perspective on accountants and number-crunchers, demonstrating the extent to which data has shaped and controlled people’s lives across centuries and continents. (Professor Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories)
A timely and ambitious history of humanity’s oldest technology: keeping track. For millennia, humans have counted and recorded the world—first with pebbles, notched bones, and cave art, later with ledgers, censuses, and now algorithms. Data Empire traces how these practices became instruments of power, shaping trade, governance, and the fate of entire populations. A compelling, highly readable account of data’s often unseen influence on our lives. (Brooke N. Newman, author of The Crown’s Silence)
Data is everywhere—and has been for over 67,000 years. In Data Empire, Roopika Risam retells the epic, tragic, and triumphal stories of how humans generated data to encode and organize their worlds. Risam explores information as a powerful tool, one that can help us to recover historical memories or deliver “engines of control” into the hands of Silicon Valley tech firms. From Paleolithic cave paintings to ancient shipwrecks to Mesoamerican calendars to ICE raids: every age is presented with choices about their data. Data Empire demonstrates that we are not beholden to the stories that corporations wish to tell or sell about us. We can choose to resist and to take back our data—if we work together. (Sarah E. Bond, author of Strike)
Professor Risam’s Data Empire offers fascinating perspectives on data’s role in classifying persons, controlling resources, and hardening hierarchies. Her longue duree history—from King Sargon to cybernetics—puts record-keeping at center stage. As Risam argues, far from being the mere residue of events, data often shapes and sparks them. Read this book both to enjoy her captivating historical narrative, and to bring a fresh new perspective to current debates on privacy and AI. (Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society and New Laws of Robotics)
What if the story of data is the story of humanity? In a work of enormous erudition, Risam guides readers across continents and centuries to reach a sobering conclusion: data is us—our societies, our cultures, our futures—and we are ceding control to an unaccountable few. (Dan Bouk, author of Democracy’s Data)
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