Data Empire - by Roopika Risam (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From clay tablets to the algorithmic state, a groundbreaking new lens on human history arguing that information has always been the seed of power, for readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

Long before writing existed, at the dawn of civilization 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 percent 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.

With our earliest tools like 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. Empire was never just about weapons or ships. It was built on collecting information on us, to rule us. Both a sweeping history and a sharp critique, Data Empire is a call to recognize the power data holds--and to imagine what resistance looks like in an age defined by it.

Review Quotes

"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." --Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories

"A powerful and thought-provoking deep history of data and power, essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technological revolution now transforming our world." --Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis

"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

"From the earliest inscriptions, through the record-keeping of the Han dynasty and the Domesday book, to the modern world of the internet and AI, Risam demonstrates how data has both controlled and liberated us, and, in doing so, molded the human story. Breathtaking in its scope and enormously fulfilling in its depth, this book is profoundly fascinating." --Lewis Dartnell, author of Being Human

"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, Risam shows us how our society has been confronted again and again by the threat and weaponization of data. But we have a choice: we can resist and take back our data, but only if we work together." --Sarah E. Bond, author of Strike

"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

"Roopika Risam's Data Empire offers fascinating new perspectives on data's role in classifying persons, controlling resources, and hardening hierarchies. Her captivating longue duree history--from King Sargon to cybernetics--puts record-keeping at center stage, arguing that data is not merely the residue of events, but one of its main drivers." --Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society and New Laws of Robotics