A talk about the evolution of data and its use, how it has accelerated in the 21 st century, and what it means for us both as individuals and collectively as a species, with the goal of opening the minds of the audience to see past convenience and understand their data as both a commodity and tool, neither of which they currently control.

The poetry of Emily Dickinson is uniquely characterized by the dashes that weave throughout her vast canon. Unfortunately, this current of dashes—conducting the pace of Dickinson’s poetry as with the arms of an apparition—is misunderstood and channeled in directions by modern scholarship that diminish the effect of the dashes. I contend the dashes originate from the possibility that Emily Dickinson breathed through her mouth.