The Ordinal Society

Presents a structural exploration of the commodification of the digital traces that pervade our world… [This book] helps readers better understand one aspect of the increasing digitization of society by exploring the many combinatorial possibilities for data misuse. -- Jonathan Wai * Science *
An incisive, crystalline account of how the tracking and scoring of personal data has come to modulate contemporary existence—not only its dreary routines, creepy supervisions, and troublesome extractions and biases, but also its experiences of delight, connection, and effervescence. Essential reading for understanding the hold of digital ordering on our world, and for thinking up ways to loosen its grip. -- Natasha Schüll, author of Addiction by Design
This groundbreaking and revelatory book illuminates the seismic social changes provoked by the ubiquity of data. Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy show how in this new ordinal society, where everything and everyone is ranked, social stratification is created, codified, and in the end legitimized like never before. Far-reaching and deeply researched, this is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand inequality in the twenty-first century. -- Gabriel Zucman, coauthor of The Triumph of Injustice
With precision and eloquence, Kieran Healy and Marion Fourcade map the tectonic forces driving the digitization of everyday life. If you want to know where the fault lines are—and how they got there—read this book. -- Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture
The Ordinal Society will enter the pantheon, both as a work of cross-cutting social theory and as a clear-eyed reflection on the stakes of digital technology. Marshalling an astonishing range of theoretical and empirical knowledge to build their argument, Fourcade and Healy compellingly demonstrate just how integral measurement and ranking have become to markets, politics, culture, and the very fabric of social life. And they manage to do it with both rigor and style; this book is both intellectually rewarding and a true pleasure to read. -- Karen Levy, author of Data Driven
Under digital capitalism, social interaction itself has become the target of private appropriation and capital accumulation. Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy show how sociality has been corralled and monetized in the ordinal society—a society that may soon prove to be unbearable to most. A must-read. -- Thomas Piketty, author of A Brief History of Equality
If any work can advance contemporary social theory for our age of AI and bring it to a wide audience, it is The Ordinal Society. With the elegant theory of ordinality as a common thread uniting disparate phenomena, Fourcade and Healy sort out key paradoxes of digitality, particularly the way in which computation simultaneously promotes democratization and hierarchy. This important book deserves to have a lasting influence in sociology and beyond. -- Frank Pasquale, author of The Black Box Society