The new religion will be called Dataism. The boundaries between animals, machines and social systems will dissolve: all these will come to be seen as algorithmic information-processing systems. The notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ will be superseded by the unchallenged virtue of the flow of information – which, as Stewart Brand, the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, announced in the 1980s, ‘wants to be free’. The ‘cosmic data-processing system’ will be what God once was, omnipresent and omniscient, wise and all-powerful: ‘It will be everywhere and will control everything, and humans are destined to merge into it.’ We will worship Information and our hearts will belong to Data.
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