Domesticated by data

In the past hundred years, we’ve been trying to domesticate data as a kind of working animal. Increasingly, as we drown ourselves in data—and surround ourselves with computing systems—they appear to be domesticating us, as algorithms spread a kind of behavioral pidgin language the average person must discover and interpret, from banks to stock exchanges to newspapers to city streets. The implications of this human domestication by data are only just becoming visible, but could have a profound impact on how we interact with technology in the near future, and what technology does to and for us as a society.