New and expanded edition. An International Bestseller - Over One Million Copies Sold! Shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Since Aristotle, we have fought to understand the causes behind everything. But this ideology is fading. In the age of big data, we can crunch an incomprehensible amount of information, providing us with invaluable insights about the what rather than the why. We're just starting to reap the benefits: tracking vital signs to foresee deadly infections, predicting building fires, anticipating the best moment to buy a plane ticket, seeing inflation in real time and monitoring social media in order to identify trends. But there is a dark side to big data. Will it be machines, rather than people, that make the decisions? How do you regulate an algorithm? What will happen to privacy? Will individuals be punished for acts they have yet to commit? In this groundbreaking and fascinating book, two of the world's most-respected data experts reveal the reality of a big data world and outline clear and actionable steps that will equip the reader with the tools needed for this next phase of human evolution.

Markets have long been acknowledged to be a superior mechanism for managing resources but until the advent of big data, they largely functioned better in theory than in practice. Now, as ideal markets are within reach because of vastly greater access to information, we are on the verge of a major disruption. As data becomes a more valuable asset than cash, the rules for surviving and thriving are changing. Reinventing Capitalism is a provocative look at how data is reinventing markets and, in so doing, is ushering in an era where the firm is no longer predominant. With richer and more comprehensive information about human wants and needs, an economy powered by data offers the possibility of increased abundance, equality, and resilience. The data-driven markets that will thrive in this environment are far better than firms at organizing human endeavors, meaning that finance driven capitalism is being displaced by its more efficient, moresustainable, and more democratic disruptor: data capitalism.

"Financial Times" Business Book of the Year Finalist
"Illuminating and very timely . . . a fascinating -- and sometimes alarming -- survey of big data's growing effect on just about everything: business, government, science and medicine, privacy, and even on the way we think."
--"New York Times"
It seems like "big data" is in the news every day, as we read the latest examples of how powerful algorithms are teasing out the hidden connections between seemingly unrelated things. Whether it is used by the NSA to fight terrorism or by online retailers to predict customers' buying patterns, big data is a revolution occurring around us, in the process of forever changing economics, science, culture, and the very way we think. But it also poses new threats, from the end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven't even done yet, based on big data's ability to predict our future behavior. What we have already seen is just the tip of the iceberg.
"Big Data" is the first major book about this earthshaking subject, with two leading experts explaining what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards.
"An optimistic and practical look at the Big Data revolution -- just the thing to get your head around the big changes already underway and the bigger changes to come."
--Cory Doctorow, boingboing.com