About the Book
The next chapter of human history should not be written by algorithms, it should be written by us. It is only by fully understanding how data has shaped our past that we can decide what role it plays in our future.
We live in an era when trading our information for access can feel harmless or inevitable – yet from targeted advertising to mass surveillance, data shapes the course of our lives. How did it gain the power it now holds over us?
Long before writing existed, at the dawn of civilisation in Mesopotamia, rulers pressed marks into clay to keep track of land, people and grain. To rule, they had to keep count. It is no accident, then, that the first written name in human history was neither a god nor a king, but an accountant. As ships and navigation expanded our horizons, a new age of European empires took control of more than 80 per cent of the world’s surface, using colonial censuses, maps and ledgers to decide who belonged, who owed, and who could be sacrificed. Today, a handful of private brokers increasingly define what we see and what is real.
Taking readers from ancient cave markings and knotted strings to the algorithmic state, Dartmouth professor Roopika Risam reveals how data has always been the seed of power: a technology of control that has shaped civilizations and upheld empires. Provocative, humane and sweeping in scope, Data Empire challenges us to decide whether we will allow a new set of data empires to hardwire inequality into the next century, or fight for systems that work for the benefit of all.
This groundbreaking 11,000 year history argues that empire was never just about weapons or ships - it was built on collecting information on us, to rule us. Perfect for readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
'The new history of mankind demanded by our times... This book asks what we will do about data now that we have no choice but to do something' Jaron Lanier, author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Right Now
'Breathtaking in its scope and enormously fulfilling in its depth, this book is profoundly fascinating' Lewis Dartnell, author of Being Human
'Essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technological revolution now transforming our world' Jonathan Kennedy, author of Pathogenesis
'This brilliant, readable book offers a striking new historical perspective' Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories
© Roopika Risam 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
About the Author :
Roopika Risam is Professor of Digital Humanities and Social Engagement at Dartmouth. Her research explores how histories of race, empire, and technology shape the modern world. She is the author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, taught in over 150 universities worldwide, and co-editor of four collections, including Anti-Racist Community Engagement and The Digital Black Atlantic. Risam is past president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the U.S. scholarly organization for digital research in the humanities.
Review :
From the earliest inscriptions, through the record-keeping of the Han dynasty or the Domesday book, to the modern world of the internet and AI, Risam demonstrates how data has both controlled and liberated us and so moulded the human story. Breathtaking in its scope and enormously fulfilling in its depth, this book is profoundly fascinating.
Here is the new history of mankind demanded by our times. We can understand our past, going all the way back to our emergence as a species, as a struggle over data. Data used to turn into power through intermediates like money and politics, but now it does so more directly. Humanity was forced to enact reforms to make money and politics survivable. This book asks what we will do about data now that we have no choice but to do something.
A powerful and thought-provoking deep history of data and power, essential reading for understanding the opportunities and dangers of the technological revolution now transforming our world.
This brilliant, readable book offers a striking new historical perspective on accountants and number-crunchers, demonstrating the extent to which data has shaped and controlled people’s lives across centuries and continents.
A timely and ambitious history of humanity’s oldest technology: keeping track. For millennia, humans have counted and recorded the world – first with pebbles, notched bones, and cave art, later with ledgers, censuses, and now algorithms. Data Empire traces how these practices became instruments of power, shaping trade, governance, and the fate of entire populations. A compelling, highly readable account of data’s often unseen influence on our lives.
Data is everywhere – and has been for over 67,000 years. In Data Empire, Roopika Risam retells the epic, tragic, and triumphal stories of how humans generated data to encode and organize their worlds. Risam explores information as a powerful tool, one that can help us to recover historical memories or deliver “engines of control” into the hands of Silicon Valley tech firms. From Palaeolithic cave paintings to ancient shipwrecks to Mesoamerican calendars to ICE raids: every age is presented with choices about their data. Data Empire demonstrates that we are not beholden to the stories that corporations wish to tell or sell about us. We can choose to resist and to take back our data – if we work together.
Professor Risam’s Data Empire offers fascinating perspectives on data’s role in classifying persons, controlling resources, and hardening hierarchies. Her longue duree history – from King Sargon to cybernetics – puts record-keeping at centre stage. As Risam argues, far from being the mere residue of events, data often shapes and sparks them. Read this book both to enjoy her captivating historical narrative, and to bring a fresh new perspective to current debates on privacy and AI.
What if the story of data is the story of humanity? In a work of enormous erudition, Risam guides readers across continents and centuries to reach a sobering conclusion: data is us – our societies, our cultures, our futures – and we are ceding control to an unaccountable few.
Roopika Risam has let data's story unfurl over centuries and across continents. The result is something profound, a chance to see how our current moment of LLMs and data brokers and ubiquitous surveillance sits in the bigger story of human history. This is an essential book.
If data is the new oil, then Roopika Risam’s Data Empire can stand next to Daniel Yergin’s epic history of oil, The Prize as a fascinating tale of how data slowly became the most consequential commodity in our world.
