How Data Happened: Professors Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones on the History of Data

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones, authors of the new book How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms, join Patrick to discuss the history of data, why enumerating things isn't a neutral act, and the ethics of building a world on the foundation of data.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

Listen to new episodes 1 week early, to exclusive seasons 1 and 2, and to all episodes ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/tidesofhistory

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to Tides of History, add free on Amazon Music.
0:04.2	Download the app today.
0:06.0	Hi everybody from Wondery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History.
0:22.0	It's great to have you all here and thanks for joining me.
0:24.8	We live in a world that is increasingly made up of data.
0:28.2	We navigate that world using tools that are built on huge repositories of data.
0:33.0	We ourselves are data, collections of tiny bits of information housed in an unknowable
0:37.5	number of places on the internet.
0:39.2	Our pet elections, our interests, our voting patterns, our credit score, and everything
0:43.4	else about us are products to be sold to advertisers.
0:46.9	To varying degrees most of us simply take all that for granted.
0:49.8	It's how the world is and it's pretty difficult to simply opt out.
0:53.2	But everything has a history and it's not a history the vast majority of us are familiar
0:57.6	with.
0:58.6	How did it get that way?
0:59.7	How did data happen?
1:02.1	Today's guests, two guests, plural, have written a wonderful new book that explains our
1:06.8	increasing entanglement with data entitled How Data Happened, a history from the age of
1:11.3	reason to the age of algorithms.
1:13.9	Chris Wiggins is associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University and
1:17.7	Chief Data Scientist at the New York Times.
1:20.2	Matthew Jones is a historian of science.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wondery / Patrick Wyman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wondery / Patrick Wyman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.