Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

Dataists explain to those who still worship flesh-and-blood mortals that they are overly attached to outdated technology. Homo sapiens is an obsolete algorithm. After all, what’s the advantage of humans over chickens? Only that in humans information flows in much more complex patterns. Humans absorb more data, and process it using better algorithms than do chickens. (In day-to-day language this means that humans allegedly have deeper emotions and superior intellectual abilities. But remember that according to current biological dogma, emotions and intelligence are just algorithms.) Well then, if we could create a data-processing system that can assimilate even more data than a human being, and process it even more efficiently, wouldn’t that system be superior to a human in

Dataism is the first movement since 1789 that created a genuinely novel value: freedom of information.

Dataists believe all good things – including economic growth – depend on the freedom of information.

Dataists believe in the invisible hand of the dataflow.

Dataism adopts a strictly functional approach to humanity, appraising the value of human experiences according to their function in data-processing mechanisms.

Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view.

Yet in the twenty-first century, feelings are no longer the best algorithms in the world. We are developing superior algorithms that utilise unprecedented computing power and giant databases.