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

by Jer Thorp

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374720513
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	322,229
File size:	27 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jer Thorp is an artist, a writer, and a teacher. He was the first data artist in residence at The New York Times, he is a National Geographic Explorer, and he served as the innovator in residence at the Library of Congress in 2017 and 2018. He lives under the Manhattan Bridge with his family and his awesome dog, Trapper John, MD. Living in Datais his first book.
Jer Thorp is an artist, a writer, and a teacher. He was the first data artist in residence at The New York Times, he is a National Geographic Explorer, and he served as the innovator in residence at the Library of Congress in 2017 and 2018. He lives under the Manhattan Bridge with his family and his awesome dog, Trapper John, MD. Living in Data is his first book.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prologue 3

1 Living in Data 11

2 I Data You, You Data Me (We All Data Together) 37

3 Data's Dark Matter 55

4 By Canoe and Caravan 73

5 Drunk on Zima 97

6 Number of Grown Sheep That Were Sheared 121

7 do/until 137

Interlude 149

8 A Lossy Kind of Alchemy 159

9 The Rice Show 171

10 Paradox Walnuts 181

11 St. Silicon's Hospital and the Map Room 197

12 Te Mana Raraunga 219

13 An Internet of What 237

14 Here in Dataland 257

Epilogue 273

Notes 279

Acknowledgments 297

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/14/2021

Data artist Thorp takes an enlightening excursion through humans’ ever-changing relationship with data in his spot-on debut. To “tell the real story of data,” Thorp writes, one must look beyond Facebook and machine learning, and toward “places where the story bubbled up a century ago, and the places where we can find new stories just beginning to flow.” To that end, he recounts his adventures through the Angolan wilderness collecting data about plant and animal life, atop a melting glacier as part of an effort to track the ice’s movement, and 1,100 meters below the surface of the ocean in search of methane “cold seeps.” Central is the tension between two futures: one in which “living in data” means being acted on largely without one’s knowledge, and a people-first alternative in which individuals and communities maintain sovereignty over their data. With a gift for explaining technical matters—he describes algorithms via a comparison to gym class team selection—Thorp makes accessible the technical, moral, and political implications of data collection and distribution. Those with qualms about living in an ever more data-driven world owe it to themselves to pick this up. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"A nonlinear and stunningly illustrated book, Living In Data never tries to wrap things up neatly for the reader. The book is a complicated, iterative experience of how to truly grapple with the complexities and intricacies of data. . . Living In Data is an essential text, one that requires readers to think — and to think specifically and carefully about the consequences of data decisions."
—Lydia Pyne, Hyperallergic

"If Annie Dillard wrote about data, it might sound something like this. In turns insightful, hilarious, techy and humane, Living in Data is an essential book for anyone who’s wondering how exactly we got into this data mess, and thinking about how we might dig ourselves out.”
—Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack

"Elbow-deep in data day in and day out, Jer Thorp has learned to feel every vibration. He would like the rest of us to do the same, instead of accepting them at face value––or worse, using them as shields from reality. Living in Data offers no easy fix. Rather, it shows that the potential for change lies within us: in our human, fallible, hopeful minds.”
—Paola Antonelli, senior curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA

“We hear every day how data is affecting our world. But Living in Data is the first time we can really feel it. In this book, Jer Thorp has the technical expertise of a coder but the soul of a storyteller, and the result is a highly accessible, even stirring, view into the often-invisible systems that shape our lives.”
—Anil Dash, CEO of Glitch

From the Publisher