Data was once a stable, recorded point for static reference; it became, with always-on computing and the new Internet of Things, a structural condition of capital itself. The capacity for these systems to use population-scale data not merely to describe and represent worlds but to generate new ones has evolved in a holistic infrastructure made up of both technologies and epistemologies. Haunted by the histories of colonialism, race, and population in which statistics had its modern origins, surplus data is both continuation and departure. This special issue of Critical Inquiry seeks to outline what is new without losing the evolutionary picture, which extends into the future.

Contributors include David Bering-Porter, Alexander R. Galloway, Orit Halpern, Matthew Handelman, Brian Justie, Jeffrey West Kirkwood, Luciana Parisi, Sarah Pourciau, and Leif Weatherby.

• More info on the Critical Inquiry site.
• Introduction freely available here.