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Data Empire: The Power of Information to Organize, Control, and Dominate

Roopika Risam traces the history of data from ancient censuses and imperial archives to modern platforms and artificial intelligence. She shows how counting, classification, maps, identity records, and predictive systems help institutions organize populations while also deciding who is visible, valuable, suspicious, or expendable. Colonial governments and contemporary technology companies appear within a shared history of information and control. The book argues that data is never simply raw fact: categories reflect political choices, and understanding those choices is essential to challenging surveillance, discrimination, and concentrated power in the digital present.

Publisher: Harper
Publication date: 2026-07-14
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9780063430327

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