Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Paperwork of the inner self -- The varieties of not belonging -- The storage of the very, very small -- Data mining in Zuni -- Possible future worlds -- The double experiment -- "I do not want secrets....I only want your dreams" -- Not fade away (a history of the life history) -- New encyclopedias will arise -- Brief golden age -- Conclusion.

"Just a few years before the dawn of the digital age, Harvard psychologist Bert Kaplan set out to build the largest database of sociological information ever assembled. It was the mid-1950s, and social scientists were entranced by the human insights promised by Rorschach tests and other innovative scientific protocols. Kaplan, along with anthropologist A.I. Hallowell and a team of researchers, sought out a varied range of non-European subjects among remote and largely non-literate peoples around the globe. Recording their dreams, stories, and innermost thoughts in a vast database, Kaplan envisioned future researchers accessing the data through the cutting-edge Readex machine. Almost immediately, however, technological developments and the obsolescence of the theoretical framework rendered the project irrelevant, and eventually it was forgotten.... In a scrupulously researched and captivating new book, Rebecca Lemov recounts the story of Kaplan's quest and brings to light an informative and disturbing chapter in the prehistory of Big Data."--Dust jacket.

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