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The Mythology of Dataism: A Barthesian Reading of Homo Deus

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Thesis Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus sets out to demystify some of the most influential narratives that have shaped human history. Religions, nations, money, liberal humanism, and the belief in free will are presented not as timeless truths but as historically contingent stories through which human societies have organized themselves. Yet the very discourse that dismantles these inherited myths gradually performs a comparable operation of its own. As concepts such as algorithm , data , optimization , and intelligence expand beyond their original technical meanings, they increasingly acquire the status of self-evident descriptions of reality. What begins as a historical interpretation comes to appear as the natural direction of history itself. This article argues that, although Homo Deus seeks to demystify earlier human myths, its account of Dataism increasingly operates as a modern mythology in Roland Barthes' sense. The issue is not whether Harari's predictions will...

From Humanism to Dataism: The Displacement of Experience in the Age of Algorithms

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Introduction For several centuries, Western thought rested on a seemingly stable conviction: that human experience is the ultimate source of meaning and authority. To know the world was, in the last instance, to return to oneself—to perception, reflection, or judgment. Whether in philosophy, politics, or ethics, the subject functioned as the final point of reference. Today, this assumption no longer holds with the same force. Decisions once grounded in intuition are increasingly delegated to systems that register, process, and anticipate behavior. What appears at first as a technical development points toward something more fundamental. The question is no longer simply how we know, but who—or what—counts as a knower. Humanism and the Authority of the Subject Modern humanism emerged from a decisive reorientation. With René Descartes, certainty was no longer anchored in tradition or external authority, but in the immediacy of thought itself. The cogito did more than establish a f...