Speak Data: Artists, Scientists, Thinkers, and Dreamers on How We Live Our Lives in Numbers

“Data is the most powerful force in society today,” designer Lupi (Dear Data) and brand strategist Cox (What a Building Does) observe in this wide-ranging collection of interviews exploring the increasing dominance of numerical data as a communicative tool. Pinpointing the Covid pandemic as the “rude awakening” that first plunged the world into its ongoing fixation with data tracking and data visualization, the authors speak to experts ranging from a TV meteorologist to a MoMA curator. The q&a-style conversations touch on myriad hot button issues, including the use of data to fight climate change and how data collecting has been a “leading factor in making the case for... legal protections for trans people.” Alongside the interviews, Lupi and Cox reflect on their own data visualization projects, such as a “poetic meditation” on the U.S. census that brainstorms ways to make its staid questions into a “richer encapsulation of human identity,” and Lupi’s data-focused attempts to “try to figure out what was happening to me” by tracking her symptoms, medications, and treatments when struggling with long Covid. Ingeniously, some of the most fascinating responses come from the simplest questions, like a prompt to define data: an artist calls it “a form of memory”; a “tech pioneer” asserts, “Data is life”; a writer labels it “a magical thing.” It’s an illuminating look at data’s growing ubiquity. (Nov.)