There is a paradigm shift happening right now: the change from a human centered planet to a data centered one.

In Babylonian times, people climbed temples at night and searched the stars for the answers to life’s questions. Who should I marry? What career should I pursue? What is my purpose? They believed the stars controlled fate and predicted the future.

This was succeeded by scriptures like Christianity that said all that star praising was nonsense and the real answer to life’s mysteries lie within a book (e.g. the Bible) and it’s author (i.e. God).

The humanist revolution came and disavowed that by turning inwards. They believe that since humans wrote all scriptures, the true answer lies inside us the whole time. Follow your inner voice by reading, writing, and interpreting the world how you wish.

For centuries, scientists have been balancing the humanist ideas of emotion with the methodical ideas of reason. No new human values have appeared since the 1789 ideation of liberty and equality… until now. Dataism is the philosophical wave that has already started to creep into scientific literature and our personal lives.

What is Dataism?

Dataism: The philosophy that any phenomenon or entity is valued purely by its contribution to data processing.

Since Darwin published On the Origin of Species, organisms have been viewed as biological algorithms. Similarly, Alan Turing sparked the flame that lead computer scientists to engineer electronic algorithms. Dataism bridges the gap between these two ideas.

Through the lens of Dataism, computers, tomatoes, the flu, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, fascism, beehives, and the entire human species are all data processing systems. The value of each system is based on how efficient they process data.

History According to Dataism

Dataism has an interesting view of history that is very disconnected from how most view it. History is made when the system’s efficiency is approved, which can be done with one of these four basic methods:

  1. Increase the number of processors
  2. Increase the variety of processors
  3. Increase the number of connections between processors
  4. Increase mobility among existing connections

These goals often contradict one another. For instance, increasing the number of processors complicates the movement of messages in the network. As a whole, the Anthropocene can be divided into four stages.

First is the Cognitive Revolution, which allowed Homo Sapiens to break the 150 social group limit and establish tribes. The rise in the number of people and variety of cultures due to the spread of clans gave humans a clear advantage over all other competitors.

The Agricultural Revolution sparked the second stage. The need for communal support in raising crops enabled more people to live in close proximity. Additionally, it supported trade and communication between networks.

Thirdly, the invention of writing and money allowed for an overwhelming cooperation in and between empires. The idea that a single network could connect the entire globe started sprouting in people’s minds.

Finally, the last stage of history started around 1492, when the first early explorers, conquers, and traders started reaching for the farthest corners of our planet. These threads grew with time to become the complex semi-digital spider web of freely flowing information we have today.

In recent years, people believe that democracy and the free market became the global dominating system because they are inherently good. However, it is really due to them being better data-processing systems.

Communism is a central processing unit. A select few leaders or a dictator makes all economic decisions. Democracy on the other hand is a distributed data processing unit that puts the power of decision-making into the hands of the people. As a consequence, if one person/processor makes a mistake, others are quick to capitalize on it. However, if a central processing unit makes a wrong decision, it’s could have catastrophic impacts. Capitalism won the Cold War because distributing data processing works better.

Implications

Dataism has two main principles:

  • Maximize data flow through consumption, interpretation, and creation.
  • Maximize connections to the Internet-of-All-Things.

As a consequence  of these two missionary commandments, eventually everything will be connected to the Internet. Our refrigerators will inform the chicken coop when it needs more eggs. Trees will report on CO2 levels. Nothing will be left out of the network, including our bodies, minds, and thoughts. If the human race is a data-processing network, then the Internet-of-All-Things is its output.

Instead of the freedom of expression, Dataism enforces the freedom of information. The United State’s first and fifth amendment allows for people to keep thoughts to themselves. However, freedom of information requires information to be free and available to all other nodes in the network. No copyright. No secrets. No privacy.

Conversely, the worst thing to happen is for the flow of data to be blocked, and what is death if not the halt of data? Thus, Dataism is not anti-human or anti-life. However, since organic and inorganic systems are evaluated on the same guidelines, humans are not sacred either. And we have already come to a point where there is a deluge of data flowing that humans are unable to process it all on their own. There may come a point where the Internet-of-All-Things is a reality and life becomes an obsolete algorithm.

Looking Ahead

The world is inefficient. Take politics for example. It takes forever for a bill to go through all the stages of legalization. Country leaders used to have grand visions of the future to inspire their citizens, but now the world changes so rapidly that no one knows what the world will look like in five, ten, or fifteen years. Elections, political parties, and parliaments will be a thing of the past due to their inefficiency.

What if elections were decided by an algorithm? It would know how each citizen would vote and the underlying reasons/biases that would cause them to vote that way. The algorithm could decide what is best for us. But how exactly would it make decisions?

The truth is, no one knows. With the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence, algorithms learn to think independently from their human constituents. The individual’s contribution is not understood in the big picture. Who writes Wikipedia? We all do.

I do not understand my contribution to it all and I do not have the time to find out, because I am busy answering emails, writing articles, and processing data. The most efficient and widespread data processing system is currently the stock exchange. It is effected by politics in Taiwan, glaciers in Antarctica, and even irregularities on the sun. No one can predict where it is heading, just like no one will be able to predict how the algorithm makes decisions.

Society will ease into the algorithm, because it will make life simple. For instance, instead of 1 billion cars pumping out greenhouse gases for maybe an hour of use every day, 500 million cars could be shared among everyone. The network could know when we need a ride and where we are located to optimally transport us, albeit you give up your location information to the algorithm.

Dataism will spread itself by fulfilling human aspirations of health, happiness, and power. And yet, it may ultimately be our downfall too.

Taking it to the Limits

People will merge with the data flow because they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

According to freedom of information, there is no point to having data, if it is not shared so other people can learn from it. The algorithm will take the data, find the meaning in it, and tell us what to do. Ideas do not belong to the people who create them.

As for the Internet-of-All-Things, the two principles described earlier seek to merge everything into a single network. This includes heretics that do not want to be connected. Just as not sharing information would be a sin, not connecting to the algorithm would be deleterious to the cause.

Taking these ideas to the limit, everyone will record what they do every second of the day through video and audio recordings, as well as heart rate monitors, blood pressure devices, and brain scanners. DNA sequencing will become routine. Big Data companies will track all your emails and messages. They will record everything you like or click, where your eyes are looking and for how long. The technology is already here, and it is not leaving.

Pressing Questions

Thus far everything discussed has been a thought experiment and may not come through fruition. On the road to deciding if Dataism and the Internet-of-All-Things are plausible outcomes for the future, there are some deep questions that need to be asked:

Is consciousness different from data? A single neuron on its own is not aware of itself, but 86 billion of them create our experiences. It is possible that the universe is not as simple as 0s and 1s, and we cannot reduce our experience down to just data processing?

What is more valuable consciousness or intelligence? The line between the two grows every day. Computers do not need to be conscious to perform sophisticated intellectual feats. If a computer crunches numbers in the void, and no life is around to see it, is it still meaningful?

Lastly, what will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves? This question will be discussed more deeply in a post that is soon to come.

Personally, I dream of a future where robots, algorithms, and humans can exist harmoniously without need for life to become obsolete. However, I also realize that it is ironic that my philospohy differs from dataism, yet I am still consuming, interpreting, and creating content for the algorithm in the form of this blog post.

Thank you to Yuval Noah Harari‘s book, Homo Deus, for giving me the idea for this blog post

Conclusion

Dataism is a growing philosophy that values efficiency based off biological and electronic algorithms. Taken to the extreme, the goal of life is to build the Internet-of-All-Things by connecting everything to an all encompassing algorithm. This algorithm will work in mysterious ways, that we can not yet foresee and may have the power to decide our future.

Just as those ancient Babylonians looked to the stars for answers, one day we may look to the algorithm to decide who to marry, what career to pursue, and what our purpose is.