Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-49% $15.19$15.19
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$11.97$11.97
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: gatecitybooks
Learn more
1.27 mi | ASHBURN 20147
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample
Follow the author
OK
21 Lessons for the 21st Century Hardcover – September 4, 2018
Purchase options and add-ons
“Fascinating . . . a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.”—Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war or ecological catastrophe? What do we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? How should we prepare our children for the future?
21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.
In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari untangles political, technological, social, and existential issues and offers advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?
Harari’s unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateSeptember 4, 2018
- Dimensions6.42 x 1.33 x 9.57 inches
- ISBN-100525512179
- ISBN-13978-0525512172
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
- Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AIHardcoverFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Tuesday, Sep 24
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of TomorrowPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Tuesday, Sep 24
- Sapiens: A Brief History of HumankindPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Tuesday, Sep 24
- Unstoppable Us, Volume 1: How Humans Took Over the WorldPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $35 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Tuesday, Sep 24
- Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.Highlighted by 8,363 Kindle readers
- Two particularly important nonhuman abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability.Highlighted by 7,419 Kindle readers
- Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.Highlighted by 6,923 Kindle readers
- But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.Highlighted by 6,641 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
“If there were such a thing as a required instruction manual for politicians and thought leaders, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century would deserve serious consideration. In this collection of provocative essays, Harari, author of the critically praised Sapiens and Homo Deus, tackles a daunting array of issues, endeavoring to answer a persistent question: ‘What is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?’ . . . Harari makes a passionate argument for reshaping our educational systems and replacing our current emphasis on quickly outdated substantive knowledge with the ‘four Cs’—critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. . . . Thoughtful readers will find 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to be a mind-expanding experience.”—BookPage (top pick)
“A sobering and tough-minded perspective on bewildering new vistas.”—Booklist (starred review)
“Magnificently combining historical, scientific, political, and philosophical perspectives, Harari . . . explores twenty-one of what he considers to be today’s ‘greatest challenges.’ Despite the title’s reference to ‘lessons,’ his tone is not prescriptive but exploratory, seeking to provoke debate without offering definitive solutions. . . . Within this broad construct, Harari discusses many pressing issues, including problems associated with liberal democracy, nationalism, immigration, and religion. This well-informed and searching book is one to be savored and widely discussed.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A highly instructive exploration of ‘current affairs and . . . the immediate future of human societies.’ Having produced an international bestseller about human origins and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny, Harari proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. . . . [In] twenty-one painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly ‘post-truth’ world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history. Harari delivers yet another tour de force.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Disillusionment
The End of History Has Been Postponed
Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths. But during the twentieth century the global elites in New York, London, Berlin, and Moscow formulated three grand stories that claimed to explain the whole past and to predict the future of the entire world: the fascist story, the communist story, and the liberal story. The Second World War knocked out the fascist story, and from the late 1940s to the late 1980s the world became a battleground between just two stories: communism and liberalism. Then the communist story collapsed, and the liberal story remained the dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world—or so it seemed to the global elite.
The liberal story celebrates the value and power of liberty. It says that for thousands of years humankind lived under oppressive regimes that allowed people few political rights, economic opportunities, or personal liberties, and which heavily restricted the movements of individuals, ideas, and goods. But people fought for their freedom, and step by step, liberty gained ground. Democratic regimes took the place of brutal dictatorships. Free enterprise overcame economic restrictions. People learned to think for themselves and follow their hearts instead of blindly obeying bigoted priests and hidebound traditions. Open roads, wide bridges, and bustling airports replaced walls, moats, and barbed-wire fences.
The liberal story acknowledges that not all is well in the world and that there are still many hurdles to overcome. Much of our planet is dominated by tyrants, and even in the most liberal countries many citizens suffer from poverty, violence, and oppression. But at least we know what we need to do in order to overcome these problems: give people more liberty. We need to protect human rights, grant everybody the vote, establish free markets, and let individuals, ideas, and goods move throughout the world as easily as possible. According to this liberal panacea—accepted, in slight variations, by George W. Bush and Barack Obama alike—if we just continue to liberalize and globalize our political and economic systems, we will produce peace and prosperity for all.1
Countries that join this unstoppable march of progress will be rewarded with peace and prosperity sooner. Countries that try to resist the inevitable will suffer the consequences until they too see the light, open their borders, and liberalize their societies, their politics, and their markets. It may take time, but eventually even North Korea, Iraq, and El Salvador will look like Denmark or Iowa.
In the 1990s and 2000s this story became a global mantra. Many governments from Brazil to India adopted liberal recipes in an attempt to join the inexorable march of history. Those failing to do so seemed like fossils from a bygone era. In 1997 U.S. president Bill Clinton confidently rebuked the Chinese government, stating that its refusal to liberalize Chinese politics put it “on the wrong side of history.”2
However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom of the press, and portray any opposition as treason. Strongmen in countries such as Turkey and Russia experiment with new types of illiberal democracies and outright dictatorships. Today, few would confidently declare that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history.
The year 2016—marked by the Brexit vote in Britain and the rise of Donald Trump in the United States—signified the moment when this tidal wave of disillusionment reached the core liberal states of Western Europe and North America. Whereas a few years ago Americans and Europeans were still trying to liberalize Iraq and Libya at gunpoint, many people in Kentucky and Yorkshire now have come to see the liberal vision as either undesirable or unattainable. Some discovered a liking for the old hierarchical world, and they just don’t want to give up their racial, national, or gendered privileges. Others have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that liberalization and globalization are a huge racket empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses.
In 1938 humans were offered three global stories to choose from, in 1968 just two, and in 1998 a single story seemed to prevail. In 2018 we are down to zero. No wonder that the liberal elites, who dominated much of the world in recent decades, are in a state of shock and disorientation. To have one story is the most reassuring situation of all. Everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying. Nothing makes any sense. A bit like the Soviet elite in the 1980s, liberals don’t understand how history deviated from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality. Disorientation causes them to think in apocalyptic terms, as if the failure of history to come to its envisioned happy ending can only mean that it is hurtling toward Armageddon. Unable to conduct a reality check, the mind latches onto catastrophic scenarios. Like a person imagining that a bad headache signifies a terminal brain tumor, many liberals fear that Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump portend the end of human civilization.
From Killing Mosquitoes to Killing Thoughts
Our sense of disorientation and impending doom is exacerbated by the accelerating pace of technological disruption. The liberal political system was shaped during the industrial era to manage a world of steam engines, oil refineries, and television sets. It has difficulty dealing with the ongoing revolutions in information technology and biotechnology.
Both politicians and voters are barely able to comprehend the new technologies, let alone regulate their explosive potential. Since the 1990s the internet has changed the world probably more than any other factor, yet the internet revolution was directed by engineers more than by political parties. Did you ever vote about the internet? The democratic system is still struggling to understand what hit it, and it is unequipped to deal with the next shocks, such as the rise of AI and the blockchain revolution.
Already today, computers have made the financial system so complicated that few humans can understand it. As AI improves, we might soon reach a point when no human can make sense of finance anymore. What will that do to the political process? Can you imagine a government that waits humbly for an algorithm to approve its budget or its new tax reform? Meanwhile, peer-to-peer blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin might completely revamp the monetary system, making radical tax reforms inevitable. For example, it might become impossible or irrelevant to calculate and tax incomes in dollars, because most transactions will not involve a clear-cut exchange of national currency, or any currency at all. Governments might therefore need to invent entirely new taxes—perhaps a tax on information (which will be both the most important asset in the economy and the only thing exchanged in numerous transactions). Will the political system manage to deal with the crisis before it runs out of money?
Even more important, the twin revolutions in infotech and biotech could restructure not just economies and societies but our very bodies and minds. In the past, we humans learned to control the world outside us, but we had very little control over the world inside us. We knew how to build a dam and stop a river from flowing, but we did not know how to stop the body from aging. We knew how to design an irrigation system, but we had no idea how to design a brain. If a mosquito buzzed in our ear and disturbed our sleep, we knew how to kill the mosquito, but if a thought buzzed in our mind and kept us awake at night, most of us did not know how to kill the thought.
The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.
In the past, we gained the power to manipulate the world around us and reshape the entire planet, but because we didn’t understand the complexity of the global ecology, the changes we made inadvertently disrupted the entire ecological system, and now we face an ecological collapse. In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand the complexity of our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might break down.
The revolutions in biotech and infotech are currently being started by engineers, entrepreneurs, and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions, and who certainly don’t represent anyone. Can parliaments and political parties take matters into their own hands? At present it does not seem so. Technological disruption is not even a leading item on the political agenda. During the 2016 U.S. presidential race, the main reference to disruptive technology concerned Hillary Clinton’s email debacle, and despite all the talk about job loss, neither candidate addressed the potential impact of automation.3 Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese would take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border.4 He never warned voters that algorithms would take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.
This might be one of the reasons (though not the only one) voters even in the heartlands of the liberal West are losing faith in the liberal story and in the democratic process. Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by. In 1938 the condition of the common person in the USSR, Germany, or the United States may have been grim, but he was constantly told that he was the most important thing in the world, and that he was the future (provided, of course, that he was an “ordinary person” rather than a Jew or an African). He looked at the propaganda posters—which typically depicted coal miners, steelworkers, and housewives in heroic poses—and saw himself there: “I am in that poster! I am the hero of the future!”5
In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious words are bandied around excitedly in TED Talks, government think tanks, and high-tech conferences—globalization, blockchain, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning—and common people may well suspect that none of these words are about them. The liberal story was the story of ordinary people. How can it remain relevant to a world of cyborgs and networked algorithms?
In the twentieth century, the masses revolted against exploitation and sought to translate their vital role in the economy into political power. Now the masses fear irrelevance, and they are frantic to use their remaining political power before it is too late. Brexit and the rise of Trump might therefore demonstrate a trajectory opposite to that of traditional socialist revolutions. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but who lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but who feared that they were losing their economic worth. Perhaps in the twenty-first century populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that does not need them anymore.6 This may well be a losing battle. It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House; First Edition (September 4, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0525512179
- ISBN-13 : 978-0525512172
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.42 x 1.33 x 9.57 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #11,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #32 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- #425 in Politics & Government (Books)
- #1,129 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Prof. Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) is a historian, philosopher and the bestselling author of 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' (2014); 'Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow' (2016); '21 Lessons for the 21st Century' (2018); the children's series 'Unstoppable Us' (launched in 2022); and 'Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI' (2024). He is also the creator and co-writer of 'Sapiens: A Graphic History': a radical adaptation of 'Sapiens' into a graphic novel series (launched in 2020), which he published together with comics artists David Vandermeulen (co-writer) and Daniel Casanave (illustrator). These books have been translated into 65 languages, with 45 million copies sold, and have been recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Natalie Portman, Janelle Monáe, Chris Evans and many others. Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford, is a Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's History department, and is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Together with his husband, Itzik Yahav, Yuval Noah Harari is the co-founder of Sapienship: a social impact company that advocates for global collaboration, with projects in the realm of education and storytelling.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the writing quality intelligent, nice, and fascinating. They describe the book as thought-provoking, insightful, and interesting. Readers describe the reading enjoyment as exciting, compelling, and energizing. They praise the writing style as engaging, straightforward, and clear. They mention the book is worth taking time to read. Opinions are mixed on the ease of comprehension, with some finding it simple and easy, while others say it jumps to conclusions with little explanation.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful, challenging, and interesting. They appreciate the amazing new perspectives and analysis of current events. Readers also mention the book discusses a lot of issues, including the current wave of nationalism.
"...'ll invite readers to find out for themselves by reading this highly provocative book." Read more
"A very valuable set of observations from a great thinker. Enjoyed every page. Give it as a gift to everyone in your family." Read more
"...for the 21st Century” by Yuval Noah Harari was a thought-provoking look at the future and the impact of technology including artificial intelligence..." Read more
"..."21 Lessons for the 21st Century" to be the most compelling and important of all...." Read more
Customers find the book amazing, interesting, and straightforward. They say it's worth taking the time to read and a great addition to their book collection. Readers also mention it'll be a good complement for Sapiens and Homo Deus.
"A very valuable set of observations from a great thinker. Enjoyed every page. Give it as a gift to everyone in your family." Read more
"...The book is worth purchasing and reading but the 21 lessons were a bit obscure, at least to this reviewer, notwithstanding that the book contained..." Read more
"...Yuval Noah Harari is well worth reading." Read more
"...This would be a super book for a book club to work through for Very lively discussion!" Read more
Customers find the writing style engaging, straightforward, and logical. They say the book is readable and compelling. Readers also mention the message gets home really clearly.
"...Harari is perhaps among the most incisive and farseeing writers I have encountered in recent times...." Read more
"...major books and found "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" to be the most compelling and important of all...." Read more
"...by the serpent….Adam and Eve never existed, but Chartres Cathedral is still beautiful...." Read more
"...completing the book and glad I did as it clearly and succinctly outlines the major challenges of our times...." Read more
Customers find the book exciting, compelling, and energizing. They say it keeps their interest and attention. Readers also mention the book is refreshing and opens their eyes.
"...in the topics, I found the book to be so thought provoking and engaging...." Read more
"...can think "outside the box", which makes his books so inspiring and fun to read...." Read more
"...These books are easy to read, entertaining, thought provoking, all at the same time, as the author examines our past and the future from multiple..." Read more
"...An excellent read that inculcate curiosity in the reader and keeps several arguments open for introspection than supporting them without thought." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book intelligent, nice, and fluid. They say the author has a nice way of capturing idioms. Readers also mention the book sizzles with intelligence and wit.
"Accurate and clever written, a must-read indeed for everybody, especially influencers in every area of human affairs." Read more
"Nice prose. Very amusing. A very creative an imaginative mind. Just don't take it as a bible or take the author for a prophet!..." Read more
"He has a nice way of capturing idioms. Could be employed to create tomorrow's cliches. The first third was not original, just journalism as history...." Read more
"...However, this book sizzles with intelligence and wit, inviting the reader to contemplate (sometimes with trepidation) the future realities that are..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the book's ease of comprehension. Some mention it's simple, powerful, and undeniable. However, others say it jumps to conclusions with little explanation and is vague. They also mention the book is full of obvious statements and general common sense.
"...Harari's writing style is engaging and easy to understand, making complex concepts accessible to a wide audience...." Read more
"...It's eye opening, but there's no clear direction about what to do...." Read more
"...The Kindle App makes this easy." Read more
"...Simple, powerful, undeniable. Why didn't I think of these myself?" Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the timing of the book. Some mention it's timely, while others say it'll be slow at first.
"This book is very timely as if it's written just today...." Read more
"Not a fast read. Should read it twice, and fully research the background of his conclusions...." Read more
"This book is not only timely but is also very well written." Read more
"The content and the writing. Book came in a timely fashion and in good shape." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it thought-provoking and scary, while others find it superficial and facile.
"...It was also very disturbing because of the problems we have to grapple with, & our history of how humans have handled problems...." Read more
"...I found it superficial and facile...." Read more
"A very provocative and scary book. Intelligent, well researched, authoritative. Still, the writing sometimes is a little confusing...." Read more
"...This book is full of very common fluff you can read in hundreds of websites, newsletters and magazines...." Read more
Reviews with images
Important to read and understand how to survive into the future
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
It is clear to me that Harari is onto something. The strangeness that people feel when they run up against stuff they don't know, and have difficulty figuring out what to do, is going to be far beyond the cultural and linguistic barriers that recent immigrants typically experience. With English, there are thousands of words that have more than one meaning, and thousands of words that have shared meanings, depending upon context, and intent.
Harari is telling his readers to experience the strangeness that he must've felt speaking, writing, and using the English language for the first time. Most Americans are not used to learning foreign languages, because people come to America where relatively few people other than recent immigrants routinely converse and whatever other languages they happen to be trained in, or learn from infancy.
Briefly, the outline of this book is as follows.
In Part 1, Harari begins with a discussion of what he terms, "The Technological Challenge"., Followed by the head note reading, "Humankind is losing faith in the liberal story that dominated global politics in recent decades, exactly when the merger of Biotech and Infotech confronts us with the biggest challenges humankind has ever encountered."
He starts with, "Disillusionment; The End of History Has Been Postponed". Basically, Harari argues that humankind, having conquered the world, is vulnerable to technology that turns out to be an insidious threat to what it means to be human. He states that liberalism, as it used to be practiced at large in the world has reached something worse than just simply being a dead end, its consequences are becoming perverse. But conservatives should take no comfort from liberalism's embarrassment; nobody really wants to live in an authoritarian or fascistic state.
In today's world, 'work' is purposeful activity that society finds to be commercially useful, and worthy of paying money to people to perform whatever it is they do to make work productive. Harari says that work as we know it may become scarce because the skills that people acquire over a lifetime to make themselves productive enough to earn a living out of those activities, may be taken over by Artificial Intelligence, in which jobs that are not only repetitive, but includes those that require some form of judgment and discretion may become subsumed in the kind of tasks that AI can do more cost-effectively than people can. Undoubtedly, there will be numerous fixes that will be attempted to preserve jobs, but their prospects are likely to be some form of a rearguard action to delay the introduction of AI into those workspaces. Those worst off will likely be unskilled laborers were currently employed in Third World countries overseas at minimum wages. They will find that their labor is superfluous when a high tech companies in Silicon Valley, California, and elsewhere figure out how to harness 3D printers and comparable technologies to accomplish end-to-end production lines from concept to finished product for just about anything that is manufactured overseas.
So how do ordinary people earn money to meet their needs? How are they to be supported if they are not working in the private sector, for wages or salaries, and how much money will they need to survive. We are looking at Nth-degree consequences of a world in which machines and computer bots can manufacture whatever is needed to sustain human life. Programs of education and training need to be right-sized to meet the needs of the society as it exists nominally at the time of its inception, but for a generation or two down the road as school children mature into maturity, and thereafter into old age.
Political liberty and freedom are also on the auction block. What we experience today is freedom of choice, and how choices are arrived at, comes relatively recently in human history. Decision-making follows a well-trodden path where alternatives are weighed and measured, until the final choices made; what happens when humans are influenced by outside forces that they cannot fathom some of the choices they make benefit someone else, rather than themselves? What is to be said about 'free will' in the face of an AI algorithm that simulates human thinking and emotion? What can we say about 'Equality', when all meaningful data are owned by other people or corporate entities?
I'll leave the review here at this point, because having laid out some of the basic questions that Yuval Noah Harari writes about, I'll invite readers to find out for themselves by reading this highly provocative book.
Illustrative of style and content of this book, Harari writes: “My first book, Sapiens, surveyed the human past, examining how an insignificant ape became the ruler of planet Earth. Homo Deus, my second book, explored the long-term future of life... In this book I… zoom in on the here and now, but without losing the long-term perspective.”
Harari writes: “A single mother struggling to raise two children in a Mumbai slum is focused on where she will find their next meal; refugees in a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean scan the horizon for any sign of land... They all have far more urgent problems than global warming or the crisis of liberal democracy… Climate change may be far beyond the concerns of people in the midst of a life-and-death emergency, but it might eventually make the Mumbai slums uninhabitable, send enormous new waves of refugees across the Mediterranean, and lead to a worldwide crisis in healthcare.”
Harari writes: “this book is intended… as a selection of lessons. These lessons… aim to stimulate further thinking… The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality. Big Data… algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse—irrelevance… Philosophers are very patient people, but engineers are far less so, and investors are the least patient of all… Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.”
Harari writes: “Some… just don’t want to give up their racial, national, or gendered privileges. Others have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that liberalization and globalization are a huge racket empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses… The liberal political system was shaped during the industrial era to manage a world of steam engines, oil refineries, and television sets. It has difficulty dealing with the ongoing revolutions in information technology and biotechnology…”
Harari writes: “Democracy is based on Abraham Lincoln’s principle that “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”… Russia is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with 87 percent of wealth concentrated in the hands of the richest 10 percent of people… Humans vote with their feet… I have met numerous people in many countries who wish to immigrate to the United States… But I have yet to meet a single person who dreams of immigrating to Russia… For every Muslim youth from Germany who traveled to the Middle East to live under a Muslim theocracy, probably a hundred Middle Eastern youths would have liked to make the opposite journey and start a new life for themselves in liberal Germany… throughout the world… even if they describe themselves as “anti-liberal,” none of them rejects liberalism wholesale. Rather, they… want to pick and … choose their own dishes from a liberal buffet… Even some of the staunchest supporters of democracy… have become decidedly lukewarm about allowing too many immigrants in.”
Harari writes: “But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption... [In] the twentieth century, each generation—[worldwide]—enjoyed better education, superior healthcare and larger incomes than the one that came before it… [But] the… prospect of… unemployment—leaves nobody indifferent… Some believe that… within… a mere decade or two, billions of people will become economically redundant. Others maintain that even in the long run automation will keep generating new jobs and greater prosperity for all... Fears that automation will create massive unemployment go back to the nineteenth century, and so far they have never materialized.”
Harari writes: “What we are facing is not the replacement of millions of individual human workers by millions of individual robots and computers; rather, individual humans are likely to be replaced by an integrated network… AI doctors could provide far better and cheaper healthcare… particularly for those who currently receive no healthcare… at all… a poor villager in an underdeveloped country might come to enjoy far better healthcare via her smartphone...”
Harari writes: “in the long run no job will remain absolutely safe from automation… After IBM’s chess program Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997, humans did not stop playing chess. Rather, thanks to AI trainers, human chess masters became better than ever, and at least for a while human-AI teams known as “centaurs” outperformed both humans and computers in chess… A closer look at the world of chess might indicate where things are heading… [In] 2017, a critical milestone was reached, not when a computer defeated a human at chess—that’s old news—but when Google’s AlphaZero program defeated the Stockfish 8 program. Stockfish 8 was the world’s computer chess champion for 2016. It had access to centuries of accumulated human experience in chess... It was able to calculate seventy million chess positions per second. In contrast, AlphaZero performed only eighty thousand such calculations per second, and its human creators had not taught it any chess strategies—not even standard openings. Rather, AlphaZero used the latest machine-learning principles to self-learn chess by playing against itself. Nevertheless, out of a hundred games the novice AlphaZero played against Stockfish, AlphaZero won twenty-eight and tied seventy-two. It didn’t lose even once. Since AlphaZero had learned nothing from any human, many of its winning moves and strategies seemed unconventional to the human eye… guess how long it took AlphaZero to learn chess from scratch, prepare for the match… against Stockfish, and develop its genius instincts? Four hours. That’s not a typo... AlphaZero went from utter ignorance to creative mastery in four hours, without the help of any human guide.”
Harari writes: “even after self-driving vehicles prove themselves safer and cheaper than human drivers, politicians and consumers might nevertheless block the change for… decades… Government regulation can successfully block new technologies even if they are commercially viable and economically lucrative… For example… human “body farms” in underdeveloped countries and an almost insatiable demand from desperate affluent buyers. Such body farms could well be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet regulations have prevented free trade in human body parts”
Harari writes: “In the stock exchange… algorithms are becoming the most important buyers of bonds, shares, and commodities… The Google search algorithm [ranks] the web pages of ice cream vendors… the Google algorithm ranks first—[NOT] those that produce the tastiest ice cream… When I publish a book, my publishers ask me to write a short description that they use for publicity online. But they have a special expert who… goes over my text and says, “Don’t use this word—use that word instead. Then we will get more attention from the Google algorithm…”
Harari writes: “with the rise of AI… cheap unskilled labor will become far less important… If AI and 3-D printers indeed take over from the Bangladeshis… the revenues that previously flowed to South Asia will now [flow] California.”
Harari writes: “Within a few decades, Big Data algorithms informed by a constant stream of biometric data could monitor our health 24/ 7. They might be able to detect the very beginning of influenza, cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease, long before we feel anything is wrong with us. They could then recommend appropriate treatments, diets… custom-built for our unique physique, DNA, and personality… by 2050, thanks to biometric sensors and Big Data algorithms, diseases may be diagnosed and treated long before they lead to pain or disability… when you apply to your bank for a loan, it is likely that your application will be processed by an algorithm rather than by a human being. The algorithm analyzes lots of data about you and statistics about millions of other people and decides whether you are reliable enough to receive a loan.”
Harari writes: “Today, the richest 1 percent own half the world’s wealth… the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion… If new treatments for extending life and upgrading physical and cognitive abilities prove to be expensive, humankind might split into biological castes… Humans and machines might merge so completely that humans will not be able to survive at all if they are disconnected from the network.”
Harari writes: “the “clash of civilizations” thesis is false. Human groups—all the way from small tribes to huge civilizations—are fundamentally different from animal species, and historical conflicts differ greatly from natural selection processes… human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries…”
Harari writes: “distortions of ancient traditions characterize all religions… The heated argument about the true essence of Islam is simply pointless. Islam has no fixed DNA. Islam is whatever Muslims make of it… Species often split, but they never merge. About seven million years ago chimpanzees and gorillas had common ancestors… Since individuals belonging to different species cannot produce fertile offspring together, species can never merge… Human tribes, in contrast, tend to coalesce over time into larger… groups… Ten thousand years ago humankind was divided into countless isolated tribes. With each passing millennium, these fused into… larger groups… remaining civilizations have been blending into a single global civilization…”
Harari writes: “People across the globe are not only in touch with one another, they increasingly share identical beliefs and practices… Today, if you happen to be sick… you will be taken to similar-looking hospitals, where you will meet doctors in white coats who learned the same scientific theories in the same medical colleges. They will follow identical protocols and use identical tests to reach very similar diagnoses…”
Harari writes: “Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and have survived numerous ice ages and warm spells… cities, and complex societies have existed for no more than ten thousand years. During this period… Earth’s climate has been relatively stable… [but now] climate change is a present reality…[and] Humanity has very little time left to wean itself from fossil fuels… the mark of science is the willingness to admit failure and try a different tack… Over the centuries… the… world has increasingly become a single civilization. When things really work, everybody adopts them.”
Harari writes: “global warming is a fact, but there is no consensus regarding the best economic reaction to this threat… Ancient scriptures are just not good guides for modern economics… religion doesn’t really have much to contribute to the great policy debates of our time… Religions still have a lot of political power… As more and more humans cross more and more borders in search of jobs, security, and a better future, the need to confront, assimilate, or expel strangers strains political systems… about immigration… it would perhaps be helpful to view immigration as a deal with three basic conditions or terms: TERM 1: The host country allows the immigrants in… TERM 2: In return, the immigrants must embrace at least the core norms and values of the host country, even if that means giving up some of their traditional norms and values... TERM 3: If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient degree, over time they become equal and full members of the host country… When people argue about immigration, they often confuse the four debates…[and Harari explains... ]”
Harari writes: “Racism was seen not only as morally abysmal but also as scientifically bankrupt. Life scientists… anthropologists, sociologists, historians, behavioral economists, and even brain scientists have accumulated a wealth of data for the existence of significant differences between human cultures… most people concede the existence of at least some significant differences between human cultures, in things ranging from sexual mores to political habits… consider the way different cultures relate to strangers, immigrants, and refugees. Not all cultures are characterized by exactly the same level of acceptance… Norms and values that are appropriate in one country just don’t work well under different circumstances… [and goes on to suggest] let’s imagine two fictional countries: Coldia and Warmland… Much the same thing happens to Coldians who immigrate to Warmland… Both of these cases may seem to smack of racism. But in fact, they are not racist. They are “culturist.” People continue to conduct a heroic struggle against traditional racism without noticing that the battlefront has shifted. Traditional racism is waning, but the world is now full of “culturists.”… Today, in contrast, while many individuals still make such racist assertions, they have lost all of their scientific backing and most of their political respectability—unless they are rephrased in cultural terms.”
Harari writes: “The shift from biology to culture is not just a meaningless change of jargon. It is a profound shift with far-reaching practical consequences, some good, some bad. For starters, culture is more malleable than biology. This means, on one hand, that present-day culturists might be more tolerant than traditional racists—… In many cases there is little reason to adopt the dominant culture, and in many other cases it is… an all but impossible mission… A second key difference… is that unlike traditional racist bigotry, culturist arguments might occasionally make good sense, as in the case of Warmland and Coldia. Warmlanders and Coldians really have different cultures, characterized by different styles of human relations. Since human relations are crucial to many jobs, is it unethical for a Warmlander firm to penalize Coldians for behaving in accordance with their cultural legacy?”
Harari writes: “The last few decades have been the most peaceful era in human history. Whereas in early agricultural societies human violence caused up to 15 percent of all human deaths, and in the twentieth century it caused 5 percent, today it is responsible for only 1 percent… The greatest victory in living memory—of the United States over the Soviet Union—was achieved without any major military confrontation… Like the United States, China, Germany, Japan, and Iran, Israel seems to understand that in the twenty-first century the most successful strategy is to sit on the fence and let others do the fighting for you.”
Harari writes: “All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation… “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal” were well known in the legal and ethical codes of Sumerian city-states, pharaonic Egypt, and the Babylonian Empire… A thousand years before the prophet Amos… the Babylonian king Hammurabi explained that the great gods had instructed him “to demonstrate justice within the land, to destroy evil and wickedness, to stop the mighty exploiting the weak… Many biblical laws copy rules that were accepted in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Canaan centuries and even millennia prior to the establishment of the… kingdoms of Judah and Israel.”
Harari writes: “Unfortunately, for other people religious belief actually stokes and justifies their anger, especially if someone dares to insult their god or ignores His wishes… As the last few centuries have proved, we don’t need to invoke God’s name in order to live a moral life. Secularism can provide us with all the values we need… many of the secular values are shared by various religious traditions… Secular education teaches us that if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t be afraid of acknowledging our ignorance and looking for new evidence… Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.”
Harari writes: “behavioral economists and evolutionary psychologists have demonstrated that most human decisions are based on emotional reactions and heuristic shortcuts rather than on rational analysis, and that while our emotions and heuristics were perhaps suitable for dealing with life in the Stone Age, they are woefully inadequate in the Silicon Age… As Socrates observed more than two thousand years ago, the best we can do… is to acknowledge our own individual ignorance.”
Harari writes: “In trying to comprehend and judge moral dilemmas people often resort to one of four methods. The first is to downsize the issue… The second method is to focus on a touching human story that ostensibly stands for the whole conflict… The third method of dealing with large-scale moral dilemmas is to weave conspiracy theories… These three methods try to deny the true complexity of the world. The fourth and ultimate method is to create a dogma, put our trust in some allegedly all-knowing theory, institution, or chief, and follow it wherever it leads us. Religious and ideological dogmas are still highly attractive in our scientific age precisely because they offer us a safe haven from the frustrating complexity of reality.”
Harari writes: “Even the most religious people would agree that all religions, except one, are fictions… that does not mean that these fictions are necessarily worthless or harmful… you cannot organize masses of people effectively without relying on some mythology. If you stick to unalloyed reality, few people will follow you… If you want to gauge group loyalty, requiring people to believe an absurdity is a far better test than asking them to believe the truth… if all your neighbors believe the same outrageous tale, you can count on them to stand together in times of crisis… When most people see a dollar bill, they forget that it is just a human convention… We learn to respect holy books in exactly the same way we learn to respect paper currency”
Harari writes: “How can we prepare ourselves and our children for a world of such unprecedented transformations and radical uncertainties?... people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world… Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity… Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve.”
Harari writes: “Planet Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and humans have existed for at least 2 million years… As for the future, physics tells us that planet Earth will be absorbed by an expanding sun about 7.5 billion years from now and that our universe will continue to exist for at least 13 billion years more.”
For those with a need to explain reality in an "objective" manner, i.e., attach themselves to a specific belief system that either reinforces their existing prejudices or answers life's essential questions with dogmatic theories, assertions, and sacred texts, Harari's approach to reality will not help much. But for anyone looking to be dazzled by the sheer brilliance of Harari's mind, a mind that is unique and astonishing, then I would highly recommend this book. Whether or not Harari convinces the reader that his version of human history is accurate, or whether his predictions about the future of mankind are more likely to come true than others, prepare to be enlightened and highly entertained. Yuval Noah Harari is well worth reading.
Top reviews from other countries
It’s maybe best not to try and read it from start to finish, but rather pick a chapter as and when the title appeals to you.