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Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow
Yuval Noah Harari
Harper, first US edition, 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-246431-6 |
Written a few years after his first book Sapiens, which summarized humanity’s sociopolitical evolution into the present, Harari’s follow up book moves on to speculate what the future or our species might look like. This of course is the logical next step, but oddly enough, readers will soon start to feel like this book should have been the last part of Sapiens rather than a stand-alone book. Indeed, the author reviews many of the themes and factual material from Sapiens, giving readers a sense of déjà vu, and not in a good way as the book quickly feels redundant. In fact, if readers have already read Sapiens, I would at a minimum recommend skipping the first chapter (a generous 68 pages) altogether to maximize their time.
Just like its predecessor, this book will feel superficial and wanting of more references to support many of the claims, but given its huge scope and limited space, perhaps we can again overlook these flaws. That said, the sloppiness of some of its research is harder to forgive. For instance in the section “The Equation of Life” within the chapter “The Human Spark”, there are several factual errors, such as the suggestion that neurons communicate with each other through the flow of electrons (gasp!) or the statement that humans don’t need carbon dioxide. Moreover, the discussion on how neural networks might work betrays a lack of understanding in the field, such as not acknowledging that the cerebral cortex is the place where different information streams ultimately converge, or that new ideas don’t necessarily require the formation of new synapses, but can also be generated from the simultaneous activation of preexisting memory engrams.
With all those caveats in mind, there are still some intriguing and thought provoking ideas that are worth contemplating. In particular, the last section of the book (“Homo sapiens Loses Control”) posits a few alarming scenarios of how our species might evolve in the coming centuries. The author very much acknowledges that this is all speculative but plausible, but I nevertheless warn readers to approach the material with an open mind as these hypothetical future timelines are mostly dystopian and disturbing.
