Data Love

Digital interactive space is not only a technical condition: it mobilizes larger ecologies of meaning that cannot be captured by an exclusive focus on those technical features. Roberto Simanowski gives us a brilliant exploration of one such ecology, an ironic and critical take on contemporary society's ambivalent relationship with data. -- Saskia Sassen, author of Expulsions
With the advent of the Web, digital technologies seem to contain alternatives to the consumerist models implemented by the culture industry as described by Adorno and Hockheimer. Simanowski shows how data economy turns this dream into a nightmare of hyperconsumption founded on hypercontrol. -- Bernard Stiegler, author of States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century
With this book, Simanowski joins Evgeny Morozov as an indispensable critic of our obsession with big data. What sets Data Love apart from other accounts is its determined shift of attention away from the sinister machinations of government agencies to the impact of seemingly harmless commercial data-service providers, as well as its informed historical focus, which ties modern data mining to the venerable project of enlightenment. Seek and you will find, a famous text promised two millennia ago. Search engines such as Google have renewed the pledge, but Simanowski leaves no doubt that the digital platform supporting this promise is turning it into a threat: Seek and you will be found. -- Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, author of Kittler and the Media
Simanowski proffers a much more profound history and theoretical basis to the debate, a contribution unparalleled in its findings and with conclusions that are neither too radical nor too conservative. Without question, Data Love is the most comprehensive and philosophically rich contribution on this subject that I have read. -- Creston Davis, Global Center for Advanced Studies
Compelling. . . . Simanowski makes an excellent case that the most essential struggle is not with the NSA or Facebook but with ourselves. -- Jennifer Howard * Times Literary Supplement *
Recommended. * Choice *
Data Love dares us to reflect on the progression of our relationship with data, to think where zealous data mining might be leading, and then to solemnly answer the question: does data love us back? -- David R. Gruber * Information, Communication & Society *
A splendid and beautiful book about our society, our relationship with technologies, but most important, governments' relationship with them. . . . Highly recommended to everyone. * Articles and more *