Living in Data: A Citizen's Guide to a Better Information Future

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, statistic-ified, 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 for 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, Jer Thorp reminds us that the future of data is still wide open, that there are ways to transcend facts and figures to engage more vis