What if the history of civilisation is also the history of who gets to collect, control and weaponise information? In Data Empire, Roopika Risam offers a sweeping history of data, tracing its journey from cave markings, clay tablets and ancient record-keeping to censuses, colonial archives, mass surveillance and today’s algorithmic state. The book makes a striking case: data has never simply been about information. It has been a technology of power, used to organise societies, govern populations, build empires and determine who belongs. At a moment when AI, data brokers, surveillance and algorithmic decision-making are transforming everyday life, Data Empire asks an urgent question: what happens when the systems that once helped us remember begin to rule us? The book has been selected by Barack Obama for his 2026 Summer Reading List and has also been recommended by the Financial Times and named a New Scientist summer reading pick.
Roopika Risam is Professor of Film and Media Studies and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, where her research examines the intersections of technology, race, empire and digital culture. A leading scholar of the postcolonial digital humanities, she brings together historical research and contemporary technology criticism to reveal the deep roots of today’s data economy. Her previous work includes New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, and she was the recipient of the inaugural Massachusetts Library Association Civil Liberties Champion Award for her work on Torn Apart/Separados, a digital project documenting immigrant detention in the United States.
REASONS TO READ DATA EMPIRE
· From cave markings and clay tablets to AI, Risam traces how humans have recorded, organised and used information across history.
· The book connects ancient record-keeping and colonial censuses to today’s surveillance and algorithmic systems.
· Data Empire offers historical context for understanding the data-driven technologies increasingly shaping our lives.
· A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick, the book has also been selected by the Financial Times and New Scientist, with Jaron Lanier calling it “the new history of mankind demanded by our times.”
