There are No Facts: Attentive Algorithms, Extractive Data Practices, and the Quantification of Everyday Life Mark Shepard (2022), 296pp., $28 hardback, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, ISBN 9780262047470

Mark Shepard’s book, There are No Facts, is a refreshing interdisciplinary work that explores the captivating crossroads of philosophy, technology and urban studies. With a robust methodological foundation, carefully selected and diverse case studies, this book explores the complex world of algorithms and machine learning, identifying prominent examples of social problems in the post-truth era, where elements of data monetization can be found in almost every aspect of our lives. In the data analytics society, individuals who consent to data collection by companies inadvertently allow them to gain knowledge about others. These harms go beyond the invasion of privacy and require new theoretical concepts to address the social costs (Pałka, 2020). This work acknowledges also the concepts introduced by Shoshana Zuboff, such as surveillance capitalism, which is regarded as a new economic order that recognizes human experience as a freely available resource (Zuboff, 2019). It expertly guides the reader through the key stages identified by the author, shedding light on why objective facts appear to be overshadowed by opinions and emotions in the contemporary world. The book is divided into two parts: the first is focused on ‘practices’ (Chapters 1–3), which build theoretical framework for the second part (Chapters 4–9), which provides the reader with interesting case studies.