The New York Times Book Review - Siddhartha Mukherjee
…essential reading for those who think about the future. The algorithms that Harari describes are not trying to imitate humans; they are trying to become human, and possibly exceed our abilities.
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
by Yuval Noah HarariNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century
Editorial Reviews
Publishers Weekly
01/09/2017Harari (Sapiens), professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, provocatively explores what the future may have in store for humans in this deeply troubling book. He makes it clear that it is impossible to predict the future, so claims to be offering “possibilities rather than prophecies”—and builds a strong case for a very specific outcome. The future to which he affords the greatest probability is, in many ways, a dystopian world in which humanism has given way to “dataism”—the belief that value is measured by its contribution to information transfer—and humans play an insignificant role in world affairs or have gone extinct. The roles humans play are diminishing, Harari argues, because increasingly our creations are able to demonstrate intelligence beyond human levels and without consciousness. Whether one accepts Harari’s vision, it’s a bumpy journey to that conclusion. He rousingly defends the argument that humans have made the world safer from disease and famine—though his position that warfare has decreased remains controversial and debatable. The next steps on the road to dataism, he predicts, are through three major projects: “immortality, happiness, and divinity.” Harari paints with a very broad brush throughout, but he raises stimulating questions about both the past and the future. (Mar.)
Jennifer Senior
“Provocative...the handiwork of a gifted thinker.”Daniel Kahneman
“Homo Deus will shock you. It will entertain you. Above all, it will make you think in ways you had not thought before.The Financial Times
“Thrilling to watch such a talented author trample so freely across so many disciplines... Harrari’s skill lies in the way he tilts the prism in all these fields and looks at the world in different ways, providing fresh angles on what we thought we knew... scintillating.”The Guardian
“A remarkable book, full of insights and thoughtful reinterpretations of what we thought we knew about ourselves and our history.”London Sunday Times
“What elevates Harari above many chroniclers of our age is his exceptional clarity and focus.”Mail on Sunday
“[A] great book…not only alters the way you see the world after you’ve read it, it also casts the past in a different light. In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari shows us where mankind is headed in an absolutely clear-sighted & accessible manner.”The Observer (London)
“Like all great epics, Sapiens demanded a sequel. Homo Deus, in which that likely apocalyptic future is imagined in spooling detail, is that book. It is a highly seductive scenario planner for the numerous ways in which we might overreach ourselves.”Evening Standard (London)
“Harari is an intellectual magpie who has plucked theories and data from many disciplines - including philosophy, theology, computer science and biology - to produce a brilliantly original, thought-provoking and important study of where mankind is heading.”Bill Gates
Praise for Sapiens: “I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a fun, engaging look at early human history . . . you’ll have a hard time putting it down.”Sebastian Junger
“Thank God someone finally wrote [this] exact book.”Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Harari is an exceptional writer, who seems to have been specially chosen by the muses as a conduit for the zeitgeist… Fascinating reading.”Washington Post
“I enjoyed reading about these topics not from another futurist but from a historian, contextualizing our current ways of thinking amid humanity’s long march–especially…with Harari’s ability to capsulize big ideas memorably and mingle them with a light, dry humor…Harari offers not just history lessons but a meta-history lesson.”Jared Diamond
“Sapiens tackles the biggest questions of history and of the modern world, and it is written in unforgettably vivid language.”Dan Ariely
“In Sapiens, Harari delves deep into our history as a species to help us understand who we are and what made us this way. An engrossing read.”Shelf Awareness
“…[S]hares DNA with the work of writers like Jared Diamond … while drawing freely from other disciplines in both the humanities and sciences. It’s emphatically a work for the general reader eager to grapple with big ideas, but who is equally hungry for context for today’s headlines.”New York Times Book Review
“Provocative… essential reading.”BookPage
“Thought-provoking and enlightening, Harari’s books is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our species.”PBS Newshour
“Homo Deus is great, accessible science writing… This is a super fun read.”Library Journal
01/01/2017Harari (history, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) recaps the cognitive, agricultural, industrial, and scientific revolutions from Sapiens, his previous best seller, to highlight a shift in the locus of divinity, from shared beliefs about nature to gods to social systems and, ultimately, to humankind itself. He posits that current efforts to cure disease, disability, and death will result in biological augmentation that creates a human species beyond Homo sapiens and that this will necessarily happen along socioeconomic lines. Humanistic systems currently holding sway, such as capitalism or socialism, will disappear if humans no longer are subject to scarcity or disease. Accepting the current idea that all change is controlled by deterministic algorithms (social, biological, or computational), Harari foresees a future of data-driven technological utilitarianism if we continue to off-load decision-making responsibility to artificial intelligence. This work is speculative, obviously, and posits that if something is technologically possible, we will try it, not that we will succeed. It leaves readers with questions about consciousness and conscience and whether unrestricted data flow will necessarily lead to wisdom. VERDICT While still appealing to those of a political, historical, or anthropological bent who enjoyed Sapiens, this title will be equally thought provoking to biologists and technological futurists. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/16.]—Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Lib.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-11-23In an intellectually provocative follow-up to Sapiens (2015), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) looks to the future.Throughout history, humans prayed for deliverance from famine, disease, and war with spotty success. For centuries, prophets agreed that all of the suffering was "an integral part of God's cosmic plan." Today, obesity kills more humans than starvation, old age more than disease, and suicide more than murder. Having reduced three horsemen of the apocalypse to technical problems, what will humans do next? Harari's answer: we will become gods—not perfect but like Greek or Hindu gods: immortal and possessing superpowers but with some foibles. Although an atheist, the author does not demean religion. "Up until modern times," he writes, "most cultures believed that humans play a part in some cosmic plan…devised by the omnipotent gods, or by the eternal laws of nature, and humankind could not change it. The cosmic plan gave meaning to human life, but also restricted human power." Even without this agency, this belief gave our lives meaning: disasters happened for a reason, and everything would work out for the best. Deeply satisfying, this remains a core belief of most humans, including nonchurchgoers. Since the Enlightenment, the explosion of knowledge has produced dazzling progress but limited the influence of God. Many thinkers—if not the general public—agree that there is no cosmic plan but also that humans are no longer humble victims of fate. This is humanism, which grants us immense power, the benefits of which are obvious but come at a painful price. Modern culture is the most creative in history, but, faced with "a universe devoid of meaning," it's "plagued with more existential angst than any previous culture." As in Sapiens, smoothly tackles thorny issues and leads us through "our current predicament and our possible futures." A relentlessly fascinating book that is sure to become—and deserves to be—a bestseller.
Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9780062464316
- Publisher:
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date:
- 02/21/2017
- Pages:
- 464
- Sales rank:
- 219
- Product dimensions:
- 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)
Meet the Author
Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in history from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Department of History, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. Sapiens has been translated into 26 languages, and has already become an international bestseller in the UK, Spain, Slovenia, Taiwan, and Israel.
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