Yuval Noah Harari is someone who makes history look very sexy. It’s not just about him being a historian but more about how he analyses and interprets history that makes you look at the entire subject in a completely new light. The book “Homo Deus” is a sequel to his first bestseller book “Sapiens: Brief History of Human Kind”, which was an amazing book; one of the very best that I have ever read. Homo Deus” takes off where “Sapiens” left off; it is a “brief history of tomorrow.”
In Sapiens, we read about how Homo-Sapiens progressed from hunter gatherers through the umpteen societal revolutions that took us to our current position whereas Homo Deus describes the possible futures we might envision. Harari builds a pretty solid and convincing case for how the world of technology might blend with or destroy Homo Sapiens in coming times. It is forward looking and speculative. This book is a wonderful blend of history, philosophy, science, religion, and economics into one cohesive narrative.
The book begins with “New Human Agenda”, raising questions like What will we strive for? Basically the world has done well for itself so far. We have controlled diseases, controlled poverty, reduced wars and have achieved many other scientific milestones. So what’s next? We humans are never satisfied with our achievements. We simply crave for more, better, faster, different. Subsequent chapters ask and tries to answers thought-provoking questions like,
There are some scary propositions proposed in the book. The way humans are relentlessly moving forward, we are more likely to live longer and have super human qualities but it is most likely to be the preserve of the techno super-rich, the masters of the data universe. At the same time, there is a high possibility of redundancy of labour, supplanted by efficient machines that will create an enormous “useless class”, without economic or military purpose.
“Sapiens evolved in the African savannah tens of thousands of years ago, and their algorithms are just not built to handle twenty-first-century data flows. We might try to upgrade the human data-processing system, but this may not be enough. The Internet-of-All-Things may soon create such huge and rapid data flows that even upgraded human algorithms would not be able to handle them. When cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, we didn’t upgrade the horses – we retired them. Perhaps it is time to do the same with Homo sapiens.”
“The individual will not be crushed by Big Brother; it will disintegrate from within. Today corporations and governments pay homage to my individuality and promise to provide medicine, education and entertainment customized to my unique needs and wishes. But in order to do so, corporations and governments first need to break me up into biochemical subsystems, monitor these subsystems with ubiquitous sensors and decipher their workings with powerful algorithms. In the process, the individual will transpire to be nothing but a religious fantasy.”
Harari has given a fascinating detail of the concept of humanism and how it came to be our new belief system. As per this concept, the meaning of life comes from each of us individually. Earlier the Gods and Godmen used to determine morality, the rights and wrongs but now humanism says that all we need to do is pay attention to what it is we think and feel. Take for examples, phrases like, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, “voter knows best”, “Always listen to your heart” or the most prophetic words uttered by all the corporate giants- “the customer is always right” etc. However, the all pervasive humanism is giving way to a new belief system that is slowly engulfing the worlds amidst the advancing technologies which may well become more powerful than humanism. He refers to it as “Dataism”.
He says that, “Dataism declares that the universe consists of data flows, and the value of any phenomenon or entity is determined by its contribution to data processing. This may strike you as some eccentric fringe notion, but in fact it has already conquered most of the scientific establishment. If humankind is indeed a single data-processing system, what is its output? Dataists would say that its output will be the creation of a new and even more efficient data-processing system, called the Internet-of-All-Things. Once this mission is accomplished, Homo sapiens will vanish.”
“If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it will know how each sentence you read influenced your heart rate and blood pressure. It will know what made you laugh, what made you sad and what made you angry. Soon, books will read you while you are reading them.”
“Every day millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.”
Dataists consider universe as an unrelenting flow of data, whereby each of us absorbs and emits countless bits of data daily. Ever noticed how each one of us consistently receive emails, text messages, read articles, and simultaneously produce our own data in response to these? If humanism put emphasis on the importance of feeling, sensing and having experiences, dataism tells you the importance of sharing experiences. Dataists believe in the importance of data being free and envisions a future where there is one all-encompassing data system which is all-knowing and all-powerful. Our meaning would then be established from merging with this system that is larger than ourselves. Should this occur, it would result in a shift in our focus from ourselves to a system that knows us better than we know ourselves.
I would also like to quote few striking quotes from the book:- “
In the twenty-first century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus.
“For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.”
As technology enables us to upgrade humans, overcome old age and find the key to happiness, won’t people care less about fictional gods, nations and corporations, and focus instead on deciphering the physical and biological reality?
Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions.
All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders.
History isn’t a single narrative, but thousands of alternative narratives. Whenever we choose to tell one, we are also choosing to silence others.
But if you enter medical school today in the expectation of still being a family doctor in twenty years, maybe you should think again. With such a Watson around, there is not much need for Sherlocks.
There are no longer natural famines in the world; there are only political famines. If people in Syria, Sudan or Somalia starve to death, it is because some politician wants them to.
Fiction isn’t bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function.
Individuals will become just a collection of ‘biochemical subsystems’ monitored by global networks
On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not confined to any predetermined role. We can do anything we want — provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance.
When the moment comes to choose between economic growth and ecological stability, politicians, CEOs and voters almost always prefer growth. In the twenty-first century, we shall have to do better if we are to avoid catastrophe.
For countless generations our biochemical system adapted to increasing our chances of survival and reproduction, not our happiness.
When you contemplate whom to marry, which career to pursue and whether to start a war, Dataism tells you that it would be a complete waste of time to climb a high mountain and watch the sun setting into the waves. It would be equally futile to visit a museum, write a private diary or have a heart-to-heart talk with a friend.
The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings.
When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism.
Silencing annoying noises inside my head seems like a wonderful idea, provided it enables me to finally hear my deep authentic self. But if there is no authentic self, how do I decide which voices to silence and which to amplify?
Never in history did a government know so much about what’s going on in the world — yet few empires have botched things up as clumsily as the contemporary United States. It’s like a poker player who knows what cards his opponents hold, yet somehow still manages to lose round after round.
This is one gem of a book that engages with its reader on so many levels. Presented in an objective manner, this challenges you to go deep, take a deep breath and imagine all the possible consequences and a fast changing world. You can already witness changing job profiles, emergence of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, privacy cries and all the related stuffs. Homo Deus is so densely populated with ideas that will make you question the direction that the world is going in and whether you like it or not, you need to think accordingly. It’s more like unlearn all the learnings and relearn things just so that you remain in sync with changing dynamics. As Harari suggests that, “Since intelligence is decoupling from consciousness, and since non-conscious intelligence is developing at breakneck speed, humans must actively upgrade their minds if they want to stay in the game.” My suggestion, get a hold of both the books, Sapiens & Homo Deus and read deeply.
Happy Reading, folks. Cheers.
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