Ones and Zeros.

Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones's new book, How Data Happened: A History From the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms, chronicles how human beings became data. If the damaging aspects of data are due to a misalignment between new technologies and "our values and norms", as Wiggins and Jones contend, then such an approach is probably enough. Creating averages out of the information, he then developed general theories about humanity, treating these averages "as if they were real quantities out there", Wiggins and Jones write. Wiggins and Jones describe subsequent laws that placed some limited controls on corporate data practices, most notably with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or HIPAA) in 1996, which restricts how healthcare companies can use patient information. [Extracted from the article]