Yuval Harari famously wrote in 2016 “Homo Deus – a brief history of tomorrow” (the link gives you the full book) to which LRB devoted an extensive review
Once upon a
time, we accepted three score years and ten as our divinely allotted lifespan;
we reckoned there wasn’t much we could do to prevent or counter epidemic
disease; we looked on dearth and famine as bad hands dealt by fate or divine
judgment; we considered war to be in the nature of things; and we believed that
personal happiness was a matter of fortune.
Now, Harari says, these problems have all been reconfigured as managerial projects, subject to political will but not limited by the insufficiencies of our knowledge or technique. We have become the masters of our own fate – and ‘fate’ itself should be reconceived as an agenda for further research and intervention. That is what it means to refer to the world era in which we live as the Anthropocene: one biological species, Homo sapiens, has become a major agent in shaping the natural circumstances of its own existence. The gods once made sport of us; the future will ‘upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus’……
The current
version of Homo sapiens will become surplus to economic and military
requirements. War will be waged by drones and work will be done by robots:
‘Some economists predict that sooner or later, unenhanced humans will be
completely useless.’ Algorithms embedded in silicon and metal will replace
algorithms embedded in flesh, which, Harari reminds us, is what biology and
computer science tell us is all we really are anyway…..
Wealth will be concentrated in the hands of the ‘tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms’. Some of us will then be as gods: members of a new species, Homo deus, ‘a new elite of upgraded superhumans’ clever enough, and rich enough, to control for a time the knowledge that controls the rest of humankind, and to command the resources needed to transform themselves through intellectual tools and biologic prostheses. ‘In the long run, we are all dead,’ Keynes said. If some of the wilder ambitions of anti-ageing prophets are realised, the dictum will need to be reformulated: ‘In the long run, most of us will be dead.’…
I remember reading the first 50 pages of “Homo Deus” and feeling that this and a couple of other reviews had told me all I needed to know about the book. I was eager to see what his ”21 Lessons for the 21st Century” (2018) held for me….Once I realised that it consists of a lot of op-eds and answers to his fan-club mail, I decided against reading it. A contrarian article and a "digested read" tend to confirm my prejudice....
If
you can’t be bothered to read these two books of his or a post
of mine from last year which tried to give a sense of the basic argument, then
you will perhaps find more exciting this
hour-long discussion between Harari and Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist
whose “The
Righteous Mind” I enthused over a couple of years ago.
Haidt start the discussion by articulating a concern he feels about trends in social media, AI and the incredible rate at which the world is changing. It’s a really great discussion and I thoroughly recommend it. It certainly made me realise that I had been a bit unfair to Harari and should certainly persevere with his ”21 Lessons for the 21st Century” One of the reasons the video gripped me is because of the obvious respect the two men have for one another. It’s so great to see a serious discussion of ideas
And if that does in fact grab you, then I would suggest you view a discussion between Harari and the author of another book I enthused about recently – Rutger Bregman’s Humankind – an optimistic history. Indeed I was so impressed with Bregman’s book that I did one of my famous tables summarising the various myths he exposed.
Other Assessments of Harari
A
profile
of Harari in The New Yorker revealed that a team of eight people
supports him in his various speaking and writing endeavours. Doesn’t that
risk “groupthink”???
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/24/homo-deus-by-yuval-noah-harari-review from
the ever-thoughtful and challenging David Runciman..
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/a-big-history-of-the-future/
https://quillette.com/2018/10/26/21-lessons-for-the-21st-century-a-review/
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