Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

   2017; 398 pages.  Full Title: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the series “A Brief History”.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Speculative Futurism; Anthropology; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    There’s no doubt about it.  We Homo Sapiens are at the top of the food chain.  We are the kings of the hill, the crown of creation, and the top dogs.  The only question is: where do we go from here?

 

    Maybe we’ve reached the peak of evolution, maybe not.  But if we’re still evolving, what direction are we heading?  We’re getting taller and less hairy, that much is evident.  But as a species, are we getting more intelligent anymore?

 

    The rest of the animal kingdom view and fear us as gods.  But once upon a time, that was true of the dinosaurs, and look where they are today.  Is there anything we can do to help us remain the dominant species on Earth?

 

    In 2014, Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari came out with Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.  In it, he explains how we Homo Sapiens progressed from being just another ape in the jungle to the top of the pecking order here on Earth.  Hmm, he might be able to give us some educated insight as to where we go from here.

 

What’s To Like...

    After a 1-chapter introduction, Yuval Noah Harari divides the remaining 10 chapters of Homo Deus into three sections:

Part 1: Homo Sapiens Conquers the World (pg. 71, at 18% Kindle)

Part 2: Homo Sapiens Gives Meaning to the World (pg. pg. 155, at 35% Kindle)

Part 3: Homo Sapiens Loses Control (pg. 281, at 59% Kindle)

 

    In a nutshell, Part 1 details how we separated our species from the rest of the animal world, Part 2 details what we did when we got to the top, and Part 3 details what we’re doing today to maintain and expand our dominating position.  The text comes with a fair number of footnotes and pictures; I’m happy to report they all worked easily and smoothly.  The text is incredibly free of cussing, I counted only six instances in the entire book – three “damns” and three “hells”.

 

    Yuval Harari is careful to mention several times that he isn’t presenting his views as some sort of prophecy; he’s simply laying out one set of possibilities.  The reader may or may not agree with what he proposes, but his points are most certainly thought-provoking, and will quite likely initiate a reevaluation of the reader's attitudes and beliefs.

 

    The chapters are fairly long, averaging about 36 pages, but they are subdivided into shorter sections that often have catchy titles.  Some examples are: Who’s Afraid of Charles Darwin?, A Brief History of Lawns, Is Beethoven Better than Chuck Berry?, Who Are I?, and I Smell Fear.

 

    The book is written in English, not American, but I didn’t find that distracting.  It just means you can baulk at something for ever even if you’re ageing or skilful, hop onto aeroplanes, hope you don’t get diarrhoea, and pay for things with roubles.  I learned some new acronyms: FOMO ("Fear Of Missing Out"), and WEIRD ("Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic").  That last one describes the type of test subject that’s almost invariably been used in brain studies.

 

    The last chapter is Yuval Harari’s guess at where Homo Sapiens is headed.  It involves something he calls Dataism, which the author describes as “the worship of data”, and can be viewed as either exciting or frightful, depending on your mindset.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 13,680 ratings and 3,619 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.52/5 based on 3,377 ratings and 620 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Conflating (v.) : combining (two or more texts, ideas, etc.) into one.

Others: Congeries (n., singular); Diktat (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    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.  In the early twenty-first century, the average human is far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald’s than from drought, Ebola, or an al-Qaeda attack.  (loc. 369)

 

    Today in the US more people read digital books than printed ones.  Devices such as Amazon’s Kindle are able to collect data on their users while they are reading.  Your Kindle can, for example, monitor which parts of a book you read quickly, and which slowly; on which page you took a break, and on which sentence you abandoned the book, never to pick it up again.  (Better tell the author to rewrite that bit.)  (loc. 5753)

 

Kindle Details…

    Homo Deus currently costs $13.49 at Amazon.  The prequel, Sapiens, goes for $14.99.  You can save yourself a couple of bucks by buying them in a 2-book bundle for $22.49.  Sapiens is also available as a two-volume “graphic” version; those will run you $19.99 apiece.

 

For millions of years we were enhanced chimpanzees.  In the future, we may become oversized ants.  (loc. 6057)

    I only have one thing to quibble about in Homo Deus: overall, the tone of the book is kind of a downer.

 

    For instance, here’s a list of things Yuval Harari doesn’t like: Gods-&-Religions, Humanism, Monotheism, Liberalism, Nazism, Fascism, Industrialization (*), Agriculturalization (*), Communism, Individualism (#), Free Will (#), AI, Google, Facebook, and something called Transhumanism.  Items marked (*) are covered in greater detail in his first book; items marked (#) are "isms" that he doesn’t believe exist.

 

    And here’s a list of things Yuval Harari likes:  Hunting-Gathering (*), and Dataism.

 

    8½ Stars.  The tone of Homo Deus may be negative, but I found it to be a treasure trove of facts, trivia, and things to ponder about concerning mankind's future.  It doesn’t quite measure up to Sapiens, but I think that's unavoidable because, whereas Sapiens focuses on the factual past, Homo Deus focuses on a speculative future.  Kudos to Yuval Noah Harari for daring to undertake such a challenge.