From facial recognition-capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents-to automated decision systems that inform who gets loans and who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the census enshrined in the US Constitution to the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search. How Data Happened both traces data's historical arc and looks to the future. By understanding the trajectory of data-where it has been and where it might yet go-Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones argue that we can understand how to bend it to ends that we collectively choose, with intentionality and purpose.