From Big Data to Dataism: Philosophical Reflections on Freedom, Labor, and Biological Inequality from a Historical Materialist Perspective
Authors
-
Nguyễn Vân Hạnh
*
Faculty of Scientific Socialism, Academy of Journalism and Communication, Hanoi 11300, Vietnam
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55121/prr.v3i2.1138Abstract
Grounded in the methodology of historical materialism, the article interprets dataism as a new configuration of power and ownership emerging within the digital mode of production. While big data technologies significantly enhance economic efficiency and scientific knowledge, they also generate structural risks for future society. The study analyzes four interrelated concerns. First, the concentration of data ownership may facilitate forms of algorithmic governance that threaten democratic institutions and individual autonomy. Second, the rapid development of artificial intelligence could restructure labor markets, leading to large-scale displacement and deepening socio-economic inequality. Third, the convergence of biotechnology and data analytics raises the possibility of biological stratification through genetic intervention. Fourth, personalized data profiling may intensify individualized forms of discrimination. Taken together, these developments suggest that dataism challenges not only distributive arrangements but also the normative foundations of freedom, equality, and human agency. The article argues that these risks require philosophical reflection and institutional responses aimed at preserving democratic autonomy and a shared human condition. Such responses include democratic oversight of data ownership, investment in education and human development, and the establishment of global legal–ethical frameworks for emerging genetic technologies.
Keywords:
Dataism, Algorithmic Power, Human Autonomy, Digital Labor, Biological InequalityReferences
[1] Marcuse, H., 1964. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Beacon Press: Boston, MA, USA.
[2] Zuboff, S., 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs: New York, NY, USA.
[3] Mayer-Schönberger, V., Cukier, K., 2013. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Vu, D.M. (Trans.). Tre Publishing House: Hanoi, Vietnam. (in Vietnamese)
[4] Arendt, H., 1958. The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, USA.
[5] Foucault, M., 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. Senellart, M. (Ed.). Burchell, G. (Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan: New York, NY, USA.
[6] Harari, Y.N., 2018. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Duong, N.T. (Trans.). World Publishing House: Hanoi, Vietnam. (in Vietnamese)
[7] Han, B.C., 2017. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power. Butler, E. (Trans.). Verso Books: London, UK.
[8] Lazar, S., 2025. Governing the Algorithmic City. Philosophy and Public Affairs. 53(2), 102–168. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12279
[9] Dattijo, A., Jo, S., 2025. Human Strategic Innovation against AI Systems—Analyzing How Humans Develop and Implement Novel Strategies That Exploit AI Limitations. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. 5, 321. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44163-025-00439-x
[10] Marx, K., Engels, F., 1993. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 13. National Political Publishing House: Hanoi, Vietnam. (in Vietnamese)
[11] Xu, D., Yang, H., Rizoiu, M.A., et al., 2025. From Occupations to Tasks: A New Perspective on Automatability Prediction Using BERT. arXiv preprint. arXiv:2502.09021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.09021
[12] Marx, K., Engels, F., 2000. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Vol. 42. National Political Publishing House: Hanoi, Vietnam. (in Vietnamese)
[13] Hayat, H., Kudrautsau, M., Makarov, E., et al., 2025. Toward the Autonomous AI Doctor: Quantitative Benchmarking of an Autonomous Agentic AI versus Board-Certified Clinicians in a Real World Setting. medRxiv preprint. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.14.25331406
[14] Roitman, J., Moon, A., Lin, L., 2025. Digital Platform Economies: Value From Data? Platforms and Society. 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251358643
[15] Chatelain, C., Lessard, S., Klinger, K., et al., 2025. Building a Human Genetic Data Lake to Scale Up Insights for Drug Discovery. Drug Discovery Today. 30(6), 104385. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2025.104385
[16] Doudna, J.A., Charpentier, E., 2014. The New Frontier of Genome Engineering with CRISPR-Cas9. Science. 346(6213), 1258096. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1258096
[17] Wiley, L., Cheek, M., LaFar, E., et al., 2025. The Ethics of Human Embryo Editing via CRISPR-Cas9: A Systematic Review of Ethical Arguments, Reasons, and Concerns. HEC Forum. 37, 267–303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-024-09538-1
[18] Habermas, J., 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Polity: Cambridge, UK.
[19] Jasanoff, S., 2011. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7spkz
[20] Rose, N., 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400827503
[21] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017. Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics, and Governance. National Academies Press: Washington, DC, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/24623
[22] O'Neil, C., 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown: New York, NY, USA.
[23] Pasquale, F., 2015. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA; London, UK. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674736061
[24] Deleuze, G., 1992. Postscript on the Societies of Control. October. 59, 3–7.
[25] Bian, Y., You, L., 2025. Fairness Research for Machine Learning Should Integrate Societal Considerations. arXiv preprint. arXiv:2506.12556v1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.12556
[26] Lin, C., Gao, Y., Ta, N., et al., 2023. Trapped in the Search Box: An Examination of Algorithmic Bias in Search Engine Autocomplete Predictions. Telematics and Informatics. 85, 102068. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2023.102068
[27] Yuan, J.E., Zhang, L., 2025. From Platform Capitalism to Digital China: The Path, Governance, and Geopolitics of Platformization. Social Media + Society. 11(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251323030
[28] Habermas, J., 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. McCarthy, T. (Trans.). Beacon Press: Boston, MA, USA.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Nguyễn Vân Hạnh
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Submit Manuscript
