CONCEPT
Dataism
Harari's term for the emerging worldview treating information flow as supreme value—the creed that the universe is data streams, worth is measured by contribution to processing, and optimization of throughput is the highest good.
Dataism, as Harari describes in the concluding chapters of Homo Deus, is a new faith—or perhaps a new way of seeing—that treats data processing as the fundamental activity of the universe. Biochemistry is data processing. Economics is data processing. Politics, culture, consciousness itself—all data processing. The differences among these domains are superficial; the underlying computational reality is what matters. The highest good, in Dataist terms, is maximizing information flow: more connections, more sensors, more processing power, fewer bottlenecks, no impediments. 'Data is the new oil,' the slogan goes—a comparison that reveals the ideology while attempting to naturalize it. Dataism has no founding text, no ordained priesthood, no formal creed. It operates as common sense, the unremarkable background assumptions of an information economy: trust the algorithm, follow the metrics, if you can't measure it it doesn't exist. Optimize. These are not recognized by practitioners as expressions of a particular worldview; they are simply how things are done.
