Primary Keys
Our Human Obsession with Data

Primary Keys traces the hidden history of how humanity taught machines to remember - from filing cabinets, punched cards, and the first databases to SQL, data lakes, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on more than two decades of experience with data systems, Kobus Veldsman explores how the technologies built to organise information also shape what institutions can know, what they choose to trust, and which questions they are able to ask.