Dataism

Dataism and dadaism are the hard core of strict empiricism, a philosophy incongruously held by many theoreticians and underlying much research planning. It encourages the blind accumulation of superficial information that leads nowhere because it comes from nowhere and takes place in a vacuum of ideas.

Dataism is becoming 'a belief in a new gold standard of knowledge about human behavior', van Dijck writes, and argues that it is crucial to be aware of the different reasons for and contexts within which data is gathered. We also need to realise that data is interpreted by analysts.

Thus a newly formed somatechnics of the sensored body is beginning to emerge, in which everyday activities modulate in accordance with the modulations of the control society, and in which the body is produced within a security-based governmentality epitomised in the ideology of dataism.