Book 68 - Yuval Noah Harari "Homo Deus"
Sep. 11th, 2020 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveYuval Noah Harari "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" (Vintage)
Until the last two chapters, I was with this book. Harari has written a book which many reviewers have taken as a dystopian prediction of the future but, which is in reality, a discussion document looking at potential futures, working on current trends.
If you are as old as me, you will remember those 'Tomorrow's World' type programmes on the television: if their 1970's ideas as to life in the 21st century had been accurate, we would all be using flying cars, have limitless free energy and be living the life of luxury whilst robots undertake all the work. I don't need to tell you, that this is not quite the way things worked out! Similarly, this book is most unlikely to be a pre-history.
The author does raise many interesting concepts: the end of the liberal era is something which I could see coming to pass but, Mr Harari goes further than this, he offers us the replacement 'religion' for the new era; he calls this 'Dataism', which I found fascinating and yet fantastical.
Dataism is described as a new, fact-based religion. It seems that human beings, if they survive, will become a sort of universal virus, collecting information just for the pleasure of knowing. I say, 'if they survive because the suggestion is that artificial intelligence will be far more effective at this task and that we will either become enhanced human/computer mergers or, we will replace ourselves with a homo sapiens creation.
The wealthy, the influential, the high rollers will not negotiate themselves into a position of less power and the underclasses are sadly showing a lack of concern for the issues of significance; they are neatly sidetracked into a world of 'needing the latest technology', and playing with these new toys. Capitalism will not go gently into that good night, alas, and all the egalitarians will find themselves wanting according to his thesis.
Interestingly, a brief study of the interweb shows that the whole concept of 'Dataism' is far from a rapidly expanding new religion, it is a crank idea with little following.
An interesting book, but don't expect it to change your life.
Until the last two chapters, I was with this book. Harari has written a book which many reviewers have taken as a dystopian prediction of the future but, which is in reality, a discussion document looking at potential futures, working on current trends.
If you are as old as me, you will remember those 'Tomorrow's World' type programmes on the television: if their 1970's ideas as to life in the 21st century had been accurate, we would all be using flying cars, have limitless free energy and be living the life of luxury whilst robots undertake all the work. I don't need to tell you, that this is not quite the way things worked out! Similarly, this book is most unlikely to be a pre-history.
The author does raise many interesting concepts: the end of the liberal era is something which I could see coming to pass but, Mr Harari goes further than this, he offers us the replacement 'religion' for the new era; he calls this 'Dataism', which I found fascinating and yet fantastical.
Dataism is described as a new, fact-based religion. It seems that human beings, if they survive, will become a sort of universal virus, collecting information just for the pleasure of knowing. I say, 'if they survive because the suggestion is that artificial intelligence will be far more effective at this task and that we will either become enhanced human/computer mergers or, we will replace ourselves with a homo sapiens creation.
The wealthy, the influential, the high rollers will not negotiate themselves into a position of less power and the underclasses are sadly showing a lack of concern for the issues of significance; they are neatly sidetracked into a world of 'needing the latest technology', and playing with these new toys. Capitalism will not go gently into that good night, alas, and all the egalitarians will find themselves wanting according to his thesis.
Interestingly, a brief study of the interweb shows that the whole concept of 'Dataism' is far from a rapidly expanding new religion, it is a crank idea with little following.
An interesting book, but don't expect it to change your life.
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