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How Data Happened

A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms

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About this listen

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

From facial recognition—capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents—to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to 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. 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.

©2023 Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books History History & Culture History & Philosophy Philosophy Science Technology Socialism Computer Science Capitalism

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The prose is so well written. The story of how data came to be so important is compelling. However, the narrator I found to have quite a jarring cadence and overemphasis on the pronounciation of certain parts of certain words. It was almost as if it were a robot narrator at points.

Important and fascinating story

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