Talks & Entertainment

Dataclysm (da tə kli zəm) n.: the deluge of digital information reshaping our view of the world.    

• Half of Americans under 35 check Facebook first thing in the morning.
• People have already tweeted more words than in every book ever written.
• A third of all marriages in the U.S. now begin online.

Social media has become essential to the fabric of our society. The photos, the updates, the likes, the tweets: companies are using this data to hire us, fire us, and sell us diapers.

In Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), the Harvard-trained mathematician, rock musician, and OkCupid co-founder puts digital data to a new use: to help us understand human nature and to show how we fight, how we love, how we age, how we change, and what we really want.

With Rudder’s new form of statistical storytelling, where numbers become narrative, he shows how people express themselves, both alone and in public. Dataclysm is a provocative look at what our online lives reveal about who we really are—and a first look at a revolution in the making. In conversation with Megan Garber, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Book signing to follow.