We Are Data

What identity means in an algorithmic age: how it works, how our lives are controlled by it, and how we can resist it Algorithms are everywhere, organizing the near limitless data that exists in our world. Derived from our every search, like, click, and purchase, algorithms determine the news we get, the ads we see, the information accessible to us and even who our friends are. These complex configurations not only form knowledge and social relationships in the digital and physical world, but also determine who we are and who we can be, both on and offline. Algorithms create and recreate us, using our data to assign and reassign our gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship status. They can recognize us as celebrities or mark us as terrorists. In this era of ubiquitous surveillance, contemporary data collection entails more than gathering information about us. Entities like Google, Facebook, and the NSA also decide what that information means, constructing our worlds and the identities we inhabit in the process. We have little control over who we algorithmically are. Our identities are made useful not for us—but for someone else. Through a series of entertaining and engaging examples, John Cheney-Lippold draws on the social constructions of identity to advance a new understanding of our algorithmic identities. We Are Data will educate and inspire readers who want to wrest back some freedom in our increasingly surveilled and algorithmically-constructed world.

A exploration of the latest trend in technology and the impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large.

We are now acutely aware, as if all of the sudden, that data matters enormously to how we live. How did information come to be so integral to what we can do? How did we become people who effortlessly present our lives in social media profiles and who are meticulously recorded in state surveillance dossiers and online marketing databases? What is the story behind data coming to matter so much to who we are? In How We Became Our Data, Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for how we think of and express our selfhood today. Koopman explores the emergence of mass-scale record keeping systems like birth certificates and social security numbers, as well as new data techniques for categorizing personality traits, measuring intelligence, and even racializing subjects. This all culminates in what Koopman calls the “informational person” and the “informational power” we are now subject to. The recent explosion of digital technologies that are turning us into a series of algorithmic data points is shown to have a deeper and more turbulent past than we commonly think. Blending philosophy, history, political theory, and media theory in conversation with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Friedrich Kittler, Koopman presents an illuminating perspective on how we have come to think of our personhood—and how we can resist its erosion.

Jer Thorp’s analysis of the word “data” in 10,325 New York Times stories written between 1984 and 2018 shows a distinct trend: among the words most closely associated with “data,” we find not only its classic companions “information” and “digital,” but also a variety of new neighbors—from “scandal” and “misinformation” to “ethics,” “friends,” and “play.” To live in data in the twenty-first century is to be incessantly extracted from, classified and categorized, statisti-fied, sold, and surveilled. Data—our data—is mined and processed for profit, power, and political gain. In Living in Data, Thorp asks a crucial question of our time: How do we stop passively inhabiting data, and instead become active citizens of it? Threading a data story through hippo attacks, glaciers, and school gymnasiums, around colossal rice piles, and over active minefields, Living in Data reminds us that the future of data is still wide open, that there are ways to transcend facts and figures and to find more visceral ways to engage with data, that there are always new stories to be told about how data can be used. Punctuated with Thorp's original and informative illustrations, Living in Data not only redefines what data is, but reimagines who gets to speak its language and how to use its power to create a more just and democratic future. Timely and inspiring, Living in Data gives us a much-needed path forward.

"Algorithms are everywhere, organizing the near-limitless data that exists in our world. Drawing on our every search, like, click, and purchase, algorithms determine the news we get, the ads we see, the information accessible to us, and even who our friends are. These complex configurations not only form knowledge and social relationships in the digital and physical world but also determine who we are and who we can be. Algorithms use our data to assign our gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship status. In this era of ubiquitous surveillance, contemporary data collection entails more than gathering information about us. Entities like Google, Facebook, and the NSA also decide what that information means, constructing our worlds and the identities we inhabit in the process. We have little control over who we algorithmically are. Through a series of entertaining and engaging examples, John Cheney-Lippold draws on the social constructions of identity to advance a new understanding of our algorithmic identities. We Are Data will educate and inspire readers who want to wrest back some freedom in our increasingly surveilled and algorithmically constructed world."--Page 4 of cover

Equal parts mail art, data visualization, and affectionate correspondence, Dear Data celebrates "the infinitesimal, incomplete, imperfect, yet exquisitely human details of life," in the words of Maria Popova (Brain Pickings), who introduces this charming and graphically powerful book. For one year, Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, an American in London, mapped the particulars of their daily lives as a series of hand-drawn postcards they exchanged via mail weekly—small portraits as full of emotion as they are data, both mundane and magical. Dear Data reproduces in pinpoint detail the full year's set of cards, front and back, providing a remarkable portrait of two artists connected by their attention to the details of their lives—including complaints, distractions, phone addictions, physical contact, and desires. These details illuminate the lives of two remarkable young women and also inspire us to map our own lives, including specific suggestions on what data to draw and how. A captivating and unique book for designers, artists, correspondents, friends, and lovers everywhere.

Is it really possible for credit card companies to predict a divorce long before the couple in question know the end is nigh? Absolutely. All the information the companies need is already at their fingertips. The days of marketing professionals relying on 'gut feeling' are long gone, and intelligently analysed data streams make forecasting customer behaviour straightforward. As businesses all over the world fight hard and long for customer spend, it's the ones who transform data into smart data that will win the day, as data-crunch pioneers such as Google, Amazon and WalMart have shown. Written by a team of experienced marketing experts this enlightening book describes the revolutionary change in the marketing environment in recent years, provides fascinating case studies and gives indispensable advice on smart use of customer data. It is an essential read not only for every marketing professional but everyone wondering what happens to their personal information once it's 'out there'.

Highlights the pitfalls of data analysis and emphasizes the importance of using the appropriate metrics before making key decisions.Big data is often touted as the key to understanding almost every aspect of contemporary life. This critique of "information hubris" shows that even more important than data is finding the right metrics to evaluate it.The author, an expert in environmental design and city planning, examines the many ways in which we measure ourselves and our world. He dissects the metrics we apply to health, worker productivity, our children's education, the quality of our environment, the effectiveness of leaders, the dynamics of the economy, and the overall well-being of the planet. Among the areas where the wrong metrics have led to poor outcomes, he cites the fee-for-service model of health care, corporate cultures that emphasize time spent on the job while overlooking key productivity measures, overreliance on standardized testing in education to the detriment of authentic learning, and a blinkered focus on carbon emissions, which underestimates the impact of industrial damage to our natural world. He also examines various communities and systems that have achieved better outcomes by adjusting the ways in which they measure data. The best results are attained by those that have learned not only what to measure and how to measure it, but what it all means. By highlighting the pitfalls inherent in data analysis, this illuminating book reminds us that not everything that can be counted really counts.