The author Harari is famous for his books Sapiens and Homo Deus, which are about the past and the future of humankind. I’ve read both of them and they really changed my perspective. And this book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, explains what is happening right now and what is coming in the near future. Every young person who wants to have a job, understand the reality, and be prepared for the upcoming unimaginable events should read this. It made me both fascinated and frightened to live in the 21st century.
According to the book, the biggest revolution will be the merger of information technology and biotechnology. It will vastly change the way we live and work. Most things we learn and do today may become irrelevant in 30 years. Furthermore, we will let the algorithms decide what to study and whom to marry. Isn’t it scary? Or interesting?
It would be too long if I explain the 21 lessons separately, so I will highlight the most important and intriguing parts including my thoughts and examples.
When you grow up, you might not have a job
Humans have two abilities — physical and cognitive. The industrial revolution automated manual jobs, but humans had intelligence over machines. However, Artificial intelligence (AI) is outperforming humans in those skills. The important nonhuman abilities that AI processes are connectivity and updatability. It’s difficult to connect people to one another and to make sure that they are all up-to-date. For instance, self-driving cars are parts of one algorithm — they won’t miscommunicate and collide like humans.
The biggest problems will be high unemployment and a shortage of skilled labor. There will be new jobs that have never existed before and those jobs will demand high experts. If you want to have a job, you will need to learn new skills repeatedly.
Then, how about stopping or slowing down the development of AI in order to prevent unemployment? The train has already left and humans won’t give up the immense potential of AI. Switching to autonomous vehicles is likely to save the lives of 1 million people every year. We should protect humans, not jobs. People will have to find something else to do.
Big data is watching you
Do you believe that your feelings are unique and nobody can understand and calculate them? Scientific insight into the way our brains and bodies work suggests that our feelings are not unique, rather they are biochemical mechanisms.
When the biotech revolution merges with the infotech revolution, it will produce Big Data algorithms that can monitor and understand my feelings much better than I can.
We might end up with a regime in which all individuals are monitored all the time. They can even observe our inner experiences with a help of biotechnology. Within a few decades, big data algorithms could monitor our health 24/7. They might be able to detect the beginning of cancer before we feel anything is wrong. They could then recommend treatments and diets for our unique DNA and personality.
Data will enable algorithms to make the most important decisions in life — what to study, where to work, and whom to marry.
The companies such as Google and Meta capture our attention and accumulate data about us, which is worth more than any advertising revenue. People are happy to give away their personal data in exchange for funny cat videos. We are not their customers — we are their product.
What should we be scared of?
Today, economic inequality is a big issue around the world. The richest 1% own half the world’s wealth. Improvements in biotechnology might make it possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. By 2100, the richest 1% might also own most of the world’s beauty, creativity, and health. Genetic engineering may enable people to choose whether their child will be born smart, handsome, or tall.
In the past, the land was the most important asset in the world. Data is now the treasure. If data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humankind will split into different species. As he explained in the book Homo Deus, the next species will be superhumans. They will be healthier and smarter than every Homo Sapiens.
Most people think that a war between robots and humans is what we should be afraid of like they see in Sci-Fi movies. In fact, we need to fear a conflict between a small class of superhumans and a vast underclass of useless Homo sapiens.
Is cooperation necessary?
Humankind has three enemies — nuclear war, climate change, and technological disruption. These global problems can only be solved on the global level. Unfortunately, nationalism, religion, and culture divide humans into hostile camps and make it very difficult to cooperate. There is no contradiction between globalism and patriotism.
Patriotism isn’t about hating foreigners. Patriotism is about taking care of your compatriots.
No matter where people are from or what religion they believe in, we should cooperate to solve global issues.
You are not the center of the world
Mongolian kids are taught from kindergarten to believe that we are the superheroes of history. We always talk about the time of Mongolia conquered half the world and how great Genghis Khan was. Even during the pandemic, some people said Mongolians wouldn’t get Covid because we are unique in our blood. All in all, we are all just Homo Sapiens.
It’s not only Mongolians who think they are the center of the world. History becomes different depending on where and who is talking. As Harari wrote in the book, Jews praise their religion, Judaism, too much and always highlight the Jewish scientists and entrepreneurs who have nothing to do with Judaism.
Many religions praise the value of humility but then imagine themselves to be the most important thing in the universe.
Yes, we believe in fiction
When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion, and we are admonished not to call it “fake news” in order not to hurt people.
Religions use fiction to cement cooperation.
Fiction was important to bring people together and make large-scale human cooperation possible. Much of the Bible may be fictional, but it can still bring joy to billions. People know that every religion can’t be true, but they believe in one of them and deny the others. Even the most religious people would agree that all religions, except one, are fictions.
Instead of praying for miracles, we need to ask what we can do to help.
Secular people are not ones who just don’t have a particular religion, but they have so much to ponder and do for the world realistically.
Secular education teaches children to distinguish truth from belief, to develop compassion for all suffering beings, to appreciate wisdom and experiences, to think freely without fearing the unknown, and to take responsibility for their actions and for the world as a whole.
Change is the only constant
Since nobody knows what the world will look like in 2050, we don’t know what skills will children need. Although software engineering is one of the most demanding jobs today, AI might code software better than humans a few decades later.
So what should we be teaching? Many experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” — critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. They believe that schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. You will have to repeatedly let go of some of what you know best and learn to feel at home with the unknown.
To survive and flourish in such a world, you will need to reinvent yourself again and again and have mental flexibility and emotional balance.
It was relatively easy to predict the future and give accurate morals in the past. Now, it is a brand new game and most people don’t know how to play it. You shouldn’t believe everything that adults say. They don’t understand today’s world because the world is changing faster than ever before.
Don’t try to create a story
People like to think of life as a story. We want a story that will explain what our particular roles are and we want to leave something behind. When we’re trying to sleep or daydreaming, good, bad, real, and imaginative stories come into our minds. We constantly do something on the mental level.
When you believe a particular story, it makes you extremely interested in its details, while keeping you blind to anything that falls outside its scope. And when you give up all the fictional stories, you can observe reality with far greater clarity.
Humans have conquered the world thanks to our ability to create and believe fictional stories. We are therefore particularly bad at knowing the difference between fiction and reality.
To sum up
The best book I’ve read so far. It gives a lot of necessary insights and interesting information that people must know about. I didn’t include in my review many chapters that are about nationalism, civilization, terrorism, etc, and highlighted the parts which I understood well. He wrote many examples of history because he is a great historian, and I didn’t understand much of them. Also, it is incredible how the ideas flow — the next chapter makes sense with the information in the previous chapters. He doesn’t bias, he just sees things realistically and uniquely from most people.
22.06.29 Nana at CallPro:>
