Harari's singular talent is that he puts his deep knowledge of history to use, not to describe it, but to illustrate our present and future in perspective - with history as its relief. He does this more ably than almost anyone I have read.
Sapiens traced the arc of how humans came to dominate our planet. Homo Deus describes (compellingly, in my view) of how humans as we know ourselves will be completely replaced by a new class of beings - part synthetic, part organic.
This current book, is a clear eyed look at the present. What Harari aims to do in this book is the following:
- He has described where we have come from.
- He has laid out our potential future.
- So, he asks: What do we DO now?!
As the title of the book suggests, he takes a look at 21 issues confronting us. The books approach is to state the issue, describe the context and lay out potential approaches.
During the Industrial Revolution, it was not land, but machinery and capital that became the source of dominance. Japan is a good example of land not being the primary source of wealth creation. Harari lays out the case that in the future it will not be land or machines. Rather it is going to be data. Whoever, owns the most data, wins.
The book tackles everything from identity, war, income inequality, religion, nationalism and education. In other words, every aspect that defines us and how we want to govern ourselves.
Not surprisingly, Harari underpins every description with his most compelling thesis, that he laid out in his first book, Sapiens. That everything we do is based on a story we are telling ourselves.
What a story
Similarly, he contends that "money" is the biggest story that we have told ourselves. In a hilarious explanation he refers to the geopolitical tussle between Russia and the US. The two nations agree on nothing. However, when it comes to money, the US dollar reigns supreme - even for the Russians.
What a let down!
He of course carefully caveats his conclusion by saying that it only applies to him and that he is not prescribing it for others.
After being truly mesmerized by how Harari has described the challenges we face, I stared at this last chapter rather stupefied.
And I had just this reaction: "Come on man ...... !"
8 comments:
Thanks. I will get the book. I have read the other books by Harari.
Very nice as usual.
I have just started reading and good that you haven't gone into the details.
As rightly pointed out by you, the Historian approach of his analysis hits the target right as can be seen from recent developments around the world where Nationalism is gaining ground side lining the Globalisation focus of the last 2 decades.
Trump entrusted with the US Presidency and anticipated fall/ retirement of Madam Merkel in Germany are pointers to that.
As usual, you write excellent reviews. I wish to read the book
You have ended up tempting us to read one more of his books !
Balaji I think, democracies are driven by leaders who tap into the grievances of the majority of voting populace.
Suppose a nation of 100 people has 50 who are satisfied with the ruling party and 50 who have grievances and it goes for polls - 45 of those with grievances may vote vis a vis 20 who are satisfied.
So it may lead to a two thirds majority and disproportionately high sound bites for the party voicing grievances - that creates a distorted perception of what the people of a nation think.
Excellent review
Sounds Compelling
Must read Masterpiece
I read the book with the same reaction to the last chapter.
There are very exciting private sector solutions that require us to use AI in everything from our terrible bail system to training algorithms (a phrase I learned this week from a company that is using AI ) to analyze X-Rays with 95% accuracy instead of an average of about 60%) . The challenge is letting go of the old ways.
A good example of the old way of thinking is the entire manufacturing process. No machine is as efficient as plants and simple organisms like yeast cells. The rapid decline in the cost and speed of gene sequencing (the speed of the decline has been faster than the changes that we witnessed with computers) has created new manufacturing jobs in bio-engineering.
Both of these raise fundamental issues of ethics which are relatively easy to address if a new mechanism is established to do so.
I agree with you - your thoughts are quite exciting.
I wish to write our own last chapter which is a combination of smart public policy, individual inspiration and exciting forward looking human adventure to a new frontier!!
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