This winter, Somerset House will present Big Bang Data, the UK’s first major exhibition exploring the big data explosion that is radically transforming society, culture and politics in the 21st century. Across the globe, we see and hear more and more stories about the exponential growth of data and its associated advantages and dangers. We are aware that today people generate data on a daily basis, through mobile telephones, social media and online transactions. In 2009, we produced the same quantity of data as in the entire history of humanity up to that point. By 2012, it was estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created every day. The world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever bigger ever more quickly.