Dataism / Information Ontology
Dataism holds that reality is fundamentally information or computation — matter, energy, space, and time are emergent expressions of underlying information-processing. John Archibald Wheeler's influential essay 'Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links' (1990) crystallized this in the thesis "It from Bit": every physical quantity, every particle and field, ultimately derives its existence from information — from binary yes-or-no questions posed by measurement. Claude Shannon's 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication' (1948) provided the formal foundation, defining information as the reduction of uncertainty and giving it a precise, quantifiable structure independent of meaning. Stephen Wolfram's 'A New Kind of Science' (2002) argued that the universe is best understood as a simple computational program — a cellular automaton — whose iterated application generates the complexity we observe. Yuval Noah Harari's 'Homo Deus' (2016) popularized "Dataism" as a cultural worldview, arguing that in the twenty-first century, information flow is becoming the supreme value — organisms are algorithms, and the emerging religion of Dataism venerates data-processing above all else.
Worldview
The dataist experiences reality as a vast computational process in which information is the fundamental substance and everything else — matter, energy, space, time, consciousness — is a pattern within it. To hold this ontology is to see organisms as algorithms, societies as data-processing networks, and the cosmos as a computation whose output is reality itself. There is an exhilarating sense of universality in this vision: the same informational principles govern DNA replication, neural processing, economic markets, and quantum physics. The fundamental orientation is toward understanding, optimizing, and connecting — the free flow of information is the highest good, and any barrier to that flow is a form of inefficiency or injustice. The mood oscillates between techno-optimistic wonder and the vertigo of recognizing that one's own consciousness may be nothing more than a particularly complex subroutine.
Moral Implications
If information is the fundamental reality and organisms are algorithms, then moral reasoning must reckon with the possibility that consciousness, freedom, and personhood are informational patterns rather than metaphysical essences. The dataist ethic values the free flow of information and the maximization of data-processing capacity. Privacy, in this framework, can appear as an obstacle to the optimal functioning of the informational network — a tension that generates urgent ethical debates. The question of whether artificial intelligences deserve moral consideration becomes a question about informational complexity rather than biological substrate. Responsibility in a dataist world attaches to the design and maintenance of information systems, including the obligation to ensure that algorithms do not perpetuate bias, exclude perspectives, or concentrate power.
Practical Implications
Dataism shapes contemporary life through the architecture of the internet, social media, algorithmic governance, and the emerging field of artificial intelligence. Decision-making in medicine, finance, criminal justice, and urban planning increasingly relies on data analysis and machine learning rather than human intuition. The dataist vision drives the push toward open data, interoperability, and the datafication of every domain of human experience. Concerns about surveillance capitalism, algorithmic bias, and the erosion of privacy represent the shadow side of this worldview. The practical challenge is to harness the power of information processing while preserving the human values — dignity, autonomy, meaning — that may not reduce to data without remainder.
I. Time
Time is emergent and infinite — it is a computational parameter within the information-processing substrate of reality. Time is discrete: it advances in computational steps, each a state-transition of the underlying algorithm. It branches because computation can fork into parallel threads. Direction is uni-directional because computation proceeds irreversibly from input to output. Wheeler's "it from bit" implies that temporal flow is an informational phenomenon.
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II. Space
Space is emergent and infinite — it is a data structure generated by the computational substrate, not an independently existing container. Its curvature is undefined because the simulation could implement any geometry. Space is non-local because information processing is not bound by spatial proximity; any node in the computational network is accessible. Dimensionality is N because the number of spatial dimensions is a parameter of the computation.
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III. Matter
Matter is emergent and finite — it is a pattern in the informational substrate, not a fundamental substance. What we call "material objects" are stable data structures. Matter is conserved because the underlying computation preserves information (unitarity). It is non-local because data can be instantiated or replicated anywhere in the computational network regardless of spatial position.
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IV. Observer
The observer is an information-processing system — and in a universe where information is the fundamental substrate, the observer is a particularly complex pattern within the same medium as everything else. Not confined to a single moment or location, the observer can extend across time and space through networks, databases, and computational processes. Total knowledge is in principle achievable because reality is information and information can be copied, stored, and processed without loss. The observer is both embodied (in biological hardware) and something more (capable of existing as pure data, uploadable and distributable). Observation is active — processing is a doing. Multiple observers populate the network, and the boundaries between them may blur as information flows freely between nodes.
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V. Energy
Infinite and emergent — energy is an emergent bookkeeping quantity within the computational substrate; it tracks the cost of state transitions in the underlying information-processing. Conservation: Conserved — Noether's theorem and energy conservation are computational symmetries of the informational rules governing reality. Dispersibility: Irreversible — Landauer's principle ties information erasure to irreversible entropy increase; computation has a thermodynamic arrow that mirrors the arrow of time.
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VI. Information
Information is THE fundamental reality — 'it from bit.' Everything reduces to information processing: organisms are algorithms, societies are data-processing systems, the cosmos is a computation. Information is substantival in the strongest possible sense. It is conserved because computation is reversible in principle. It is discrete because all information ultimately reduces to bits.
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