Speak Data: Artists, Scientists, Thinkers, and Dreamers on How We Live Our Lives in Numbers
About this ebook
Data may be the most powerful force in society today. Data is everywhere, present in every moment, every event, every transaction, or interaction with someone else. Every time you send a text, call a friend, fill out a form, hail a taxi, stream a movie, surf the web, pay a bill, buy groceries, buy anything, take your temperature, count your steps, swipe right (or left), you generate data.
There's data in the weather, in the air, in the ground, in outer space. If you own a smartwatch, you carry data on your body. If you have a cardiac pacemaker, you carry data in your body.
So, what is data, really? It's a question that is surprisingly hard to answer. To some, data means numbers: figures on a screen, dots on a graph. It's also often (falsely) equated with facts, an invariable form of concrete knowledge that always tells the truth. But in reality, data is hardly so incontrovertible. Data is an abstraction of reality, a useful but imperfect representation of real life. Like life, it's full of nuance, imprecision, and ambivalence. It's quantitative and it's qualitative. And it's made by us—humans.
These are some of the ideas that information designers Giorgia Lupi and Phillip Cox explore in their fascinating new book Speak Data: Artists, Scientists, Thinkers, and Dreamers on How We Live Our Lives in Numbers.
Speak Data invites us to see data differently—not just as numbers on a chart, but as a way to understand and communicate who we are, how we connect, and how we make sense of the world. It's grounded in the principles of Data Humanism, a concept developed by coauthor and award-winning information designer Giorgia Lupi, which centers on people, rather than numbers, in its conception of data. In this beautifully illustrated book, the authors present data as a vocabulary that anyone can use, showing that when we truly learn to "speak data," we can open up new worlds of meaning about ourselves and everything around us.
Interviews in Speak Data include:
- Tech pioneer John Maeda on the value of data visualization during global emergencies.
- Marketing legend Seth Godin on how to use data to get people to really care about climate change.
- Museum curator Paola Antonelli on whether data is art.
- Atomic Habits author James Clear on the ways data can (and can't) describe human identity.
- Al data artist Refik Anadol on how big datasets can dream.
- Organizational psychologist Adam Grant on using data to communicate nuance and uncertainty.
- Activist Andy Marra on how to count something that's never been counted before—and why it matters who is asking the questions.
- Writer Naresh Ramchanda on why he's a "data optimist" and how data can close the empathy gap.
- Economist Max Roser on using data to see stories, and not just trends.
- Neuroscientist and physical therapist David Putrino on how tracking long Covid has taught him to think differently about patient data versus patient experience.
- Physician and design researcher Bon Ku on how data revealed a better way to design hospital emergency departments.
- Al scholar Kate Crawford on why questions about the future of AI are really questions about the future of democracy.
- Artist Ekene ljeoma on why we have all the data we need to make change.
- And many more.
About the author
Giorgia Lupi is a designer, artist, and partner at the international design firm Pentagram. A two-time TED speaker, she is a leading voice for a more humanistic approach to data. Giorgia is the author of two books, Dear Data, exploring the details of daily life through hand-drawn visual data, and Observe, Collect, Draw! A Visual Journal, a guided journal for collecting visual data. She was the 2022 recipient of the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and her work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Giorgia's work is inspired by the belief that data has the capacity to make us all more human—advancing our intelligence, engagement, and delight. She has been featured in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Washington Post, T Magazine, NPR, BBC, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. A visual Op Ed that Giorgia Lupi published in The New York Times in 2023 about how she uses data to track her experience with long Covid received widespread acclaim.
Phillip Cox is a writer and strategist. Previously an associate partner at Pentagram, he has worked as a branding consultant for a variety of for-profit and non-profit organizations. He is also the author of What a Building Does: The Hoosier Modernisms of Evans Woollen, in addition to other articles on architecture and the built environment.
