Can a society be governed by data? In the age of big data, we seem certain that it can and should be. Despite many decades of research exposing its blind spots and biases, data collection is more insidious than ever, while the Covid-19 pandemic has propelled our already computerized lives into a the digital stratosphere. Dr. West's lecture, based on her book project CyberSovietica: A History of Soviet Big Data Socialism and Digital Utopianism, takes up the question of big data from a historical vantage point.