I saw the secret life of data by Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert on my mastodon feed. I bought a copy in my local book store.

I would describe as an account of the history of internet through the lenses of data. A necessary contextualisation of the explosion of data and metadata and its effect on people, politics and power.

This neutral framing includes a vision of the positives of all of this new technologies. It is quite common within chapters to have both a good and a bad example of the usage of certain type of data.

It is an engaging read and well researched. I enjoyed the historical contextualisation and the necessary incursion on copyright.

Some stories felt new or expanded something to me:

  • Details on Reality Winner’s leak.
  • Confirmation on netflix extreme data practices
  • Context on bellingcat.
  • Their own research on digital divide

The solutions section felt also much better focused and effective than any other book on the subject so far: ethics and politics.

The LLM sections felt that were written at the peak of the promise of the technology and might not age well if the technology doesn’t deliver soon.

Impact and reflection

Despite similarities in substance and style with the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, I thought that the book deliberately lacked an overall theoretical framing.

That lack of theory implies a sense of continuity and inevitability that is new to me. It is just another of the many angles to experience life and history.

I might want to fight and eradicate the worst parts of surveillance capitalism, but it can’t lead to a world in which data is not collected. The technology to store and collect the data very easily is there, and the advantages of this data will always exist.