The story of the future
Writing a story about the future is quite a challenge for someone who hasn't been gifted with the paranormal. From memory I can only think of Richard Wagner, who lived with challenges, to have written an essay as confused as it is visionary and prescient entitled Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The work of art of the future) which unfortunately has become unobtainable in Italian , something that someone is trying to fix. In this essay Wagner laid the theoretical foundations of the multimedia opera which is precisely the prevailing form of representation of an opera of our time.
Only the 2014-year-old Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari could have attempted something similar as far as history is concerned. His previous books were just preparing this breakthrough of his research which resulted in a book entitled Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. This last work is the sequel and the epilogue of Sapiens. A brief History of Humankind (2001, only in English) and From animals to gods: Brief history of humanity (XNUMX, available in Italian from Bompiani). The premises for Homo deus were all there, therefore.
Harari's lectures posted on YouTube are followed by tens of thousands of people. Even his research, like that of Peter Singer we dealt with last week, has a very strong ethical matrix. In fact, starting from some fundamental questions (are we happier than our ancestors?, Why do men dominate women in most societies?), Harari immerses himself in the history of humanity in the round, ranging between disciplines, eras and cultures. A syncretism rare to find and above all port with a style of the consummate narrator who does not disdain the sensation, the paradox and the coup de théâtre. Some insights from him are mind blowing and even leave you a bit stunned like a nice uppercut.
His overall vision of human development, in relation to the environment, the evolution of the species and the other beings that populate the planet, is something new and impressive for the ease with which it is exposed. To such an extent that Harari's story could appear too simplistic and unsatisfactorily generalizing, as the critic of "The Economist" writes. "When the reader stops to think - writes the London magazine - Homo Deus suddenly appears less convincing, its aura of seductive hypersecurity evaporates". It may be an impression that happens to feel in front of certain brilliant hyperbole of the narration, but the whole system of Harari has its foundations.
A provocation or a plausible scenario?
The subtitle of the book, A brief history of tomorrow, already shows how unconventional is the focus of this young historian's research. Attempting a history of the future is an undertaking that a traditional academic historian would deem impossible if it were not provocative and insulting to the very essence of the discipline founded by Herodotus and Thucydides. Yet Harari manages to write it with circumstantial parameters and it may be that he really managed to create a plausible scenario with his models of the development of society dominated by technology and information.
Harari is a historian of a new generation that goes beyond the narrow confines of his discipline and is not afraid of confrontation with the global and chaotic dimension of the contemporary world. He is also endowed with an empathic intelligence that is truly out of the ordinary. Vegan of deep convictions, if invited to dinner by his mother or a friend he does not reject a sweet cooked with eggs and butter, especially if the eggs are of European origin where there is a ban on battery farming of laying hens. Because of his ability to consider the principle of veganism in a more general context, he claims to be "veganish" not "vegan". Harari lives halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with her husband and agent Itzik, a former theater producer, with whom she married in Canada because civil marriage is not allowed in Israel, not only for gay couples, but also for straight couples . Anyone intrigued by Harari's personality may find it instructive to read the interview with John Reed of the "Financial Times" published in September 2014 in the "Lunch with FT" section of the weekend supplement "Life & Art".
Homo Deus has been reviewed and discussed by all major traditional and online newspapers. Among the many reviews we have chosen to offer you that of John Thornhill, innovation editor of the "Financial Times". The translation from the English and by John Akwood. Enjoy the reading!
Homo sapiens, the most brilliant algorithm on the planet
Many books that have tried to predict the future have failed—sometimes spectacularly—because history rarely moves along straight lines. Extrapolating the trends in vogue and building future stories is often fallacious.
We would do well to hope that Yuval Noah Harari's latest book also suffers from this problem, because the future that the young Israeli historian describes is truly disturbing, even if he himself specifies that the scenario that emerges from the book - Homo Deus - is more a possibility than a prophecy. That's better.
For 70 years, Homo sapiens was the most brilliant algorithm on the planet, says Harari. But within a few centuries, if not decades, that will cease to be true as more efficient biological algorithms render it obsolete as a biological model. When that happens, we will find that we are no longer at the pinnacle of civilization. Computers will know us better than we know ourselves, and our supposed usefulness will be called into question. "Those same parameters that have consecrated us as dominant beings, will condemn us to unite in oblivion with mammoths and river dolphins". Looking back humanity will result in a thrill in the cosmic flow of information”. Only a few futurists have the audacity to write what Harari writes. Only a few have the intellectual capacity and literary craft to outline such a monumental synthesis of history, philosophy, science and technology. Specialists will quibble a lot about Harari's somewhat sporting treatment of these specializations.
However, it is exciting to follow this talented author as he roams freely between so many different disciplines and specializations. Harari's skill is all in the way he moves the prism of many of these disciplines to look at the world and its history differently, suggesting new angles on what we already thought we knew. No matter how creepy or biased it may be, the result is brilliant.
Sugar kills more of them than gunpowder
In his previous bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harari races at breakneck speed through millennia of history. Many of the themes of this book are taken up again in the new: the importance of the cognitive revolution and the power of collaboration in accelerating the ascent of man; the essential power of myths - such as religion and money - in the development of our society, the unforgivable cruelty with which our species treats animals. Having run out of history to speak of Harari now turns his attention to the history of the future.
Homo Deus opens with a celebration of humanity's extraordinary ingenuity and the indisputable achievements of our time. For thousands of years man's agenda has been dominated by attempts to overcome famine, disease and war. But today, says Harari, we can claim, with full knowledge of the facts, that we have won the challenge with these scourges. “For the first time in history, people die more from overfeeding than from food shortages; more and more people die of old age than of infectious diseases and there are more people who commit suicide than are killed in actions of war, terrorist attacks or criminal acts,” he writes.
Harari shows how quickly the world has changed. In 1974 the World Food Conference in Rome declared that China was heading for a food catastrophe and that its government could never adequately feed the population of the most populous country on earth. In reality, China, engineering a kind of economic miracle and for the first time in history, is today free from the scourge of famine. This doesn't just apply to China. Today we know how to do it everywhere, even if the political will is sometimes lacking. Worldwide obesity killed 3 million people in 2010 when famine and malnutrition killed one million.
A similar thing happened with diseases. In the 90th century, the Black Death plague killed more than a quarter of the population of Eurasia. Diseases brought by European conquerors to the Americas and Australia killed 1520% of the indigenous population. In 22, 2 million people died in Mexico. Disease and exploitation by the Spanish conquistadors reduced the country's population to less than 1580 million in 1918. The Spanish flu pandemic, which swept the world in 50, killed 100 to XNUMX million people. Nowadays, Harari says, most diseases have been identified and treated. "The era in which man was powerless in the face of natural phenomena and epidemics is over", he writes.
Peace is also a modern invention. While we are rightly shocked by the horrors of Syria's civil war and the dangers of terrorism, we have never lived in such a peaceful time. In primitive agricultural societies, human violence was responsible for 15% of all deaths. In the bloody 5th century deaths of this nature dropped to 1 percent and now hover around 2012 percent. In 620, there were 1 people who died violently, while those who died of diabetes totaled XNUMX million. "Today sugar is more dangerous than gunpowder," concludes Harari.
World happiness? Just one pill!
Spectacular! Hats off, man. Humanity has ceased to be God's plaything and has taken control of his destiny. Having relieved himself of the beastly struggle for survival, he can devote himself to a new development program based on a trinity of ambitions: immortality, happiness and divinity. "We can now aspire to raise man to God, and transform Homo sapiens into Homo deus."
If life expectancy rose from 40 years to 70 during the 150th century, then it could rise to 90 in our century – with the prospect of immortality thereafter. This would change our entire perspective on raising the new generation and would also lead to some disturbing consequences in political life. “Could it mean that Putin would still be around in 150 years?” Harari wonders. “If people could have lived to be 2016, then in 138 we would still have Stalin in government, still in his prime at XNUMX.” But there's no point in living to that age if we can't enjoy this life extension. This can be remedied by swallowing increasingly sophisticated - and personalized - pills or by using means that keep the brain trained and happy. "Let's forget about economic growth, social reforms and political revolutions: in order to raise the level of global happiness we only need to manipulate human biochemistry".
Our growing mastery of machines will also give us the opportunity to mix with robots and computers, thus transferring to us the power and ability of the gods to create new forms of life. "After 4 billion years of life having sprung from the realm of organic compounds, life will be able to spring from the vastness of the realm of inorganic compounds, and will take forms that are currently unimaginable," writes Harari.
The new religion of Dataism
While all of this seems to us as magnificent as just living forever and loading computers with all the work can be, Harari instead shows us how horribly wrong all of this can become as we may succumb to the new religion of Data-isms, like he calls her. One way of interpreting human history is to look at it through the lens of information processing. Homo sapiens emerged as dominant because language and its ability to cooperate gave it the ability to use information better than other animals. Capitalism defeated communism because the distribution of information proved vastly more efficient than the centralization mechanism adopted by the Soviet bloc countries.
But, what happens when computers become much better than humans at dealing with the most relevant information? Will it happen that tomorrow they will treat us as we treat the chickens today? Harari evokes the danger for humans of becoming economically and militarily useless. We'd better pray that Harari's provocative conclusions are wrong and that living organisms are more than algorithms.
The Search for Michael Bess
Michael Bess is another historian who has turned his gaze to the future. His book, Make Way for the Superhumans, dwells on the surprising benefits and frightening risks that technology entails. A Vanderbilt University professor, Bess focuses, more narrowly than Harari, on the promises and dangers of bioartificial enhancements. He clearly explains the latest developments in pharmaceuticals, bioelectronics and genetics, as well as what he calls the wild cards: nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics and synthetic biology.
These technologies promise spectacular results in curing disease and enhancing human capabilities. One day the theme of man versus machine may appear meaningless, because we may have arrived at a synthesis between "information technologies and robotics and, particularly if these are developed on the nanoscale, they will be directly assimilated by the human body and in the end it will no longer be possible to distinguish between us and them”.
But Bess is concerned about the misuse of this technology and the unequal distribution of its benefits. If inequality is thought of today as a negative factor, what will happen when we have a "biologically based caste system" in which the rich can secure a privilege not available to others. Neither luck nor hard work nor perseverance will make an individual competitive against a caste of people who have artificially advantaged in health, appearance, knowledge and are closely bioelectronically connected to cars.
“The risks these technologies pose are potentially catastrophic in their essence: what is at stake is the integrity of our social order and ultimately the survival of our species. We simply cannot afford to be neutral when the potential dangers are so great,” writes Bess.
Can something be done already?
In different ways, these two excellent, stimulating and provocative books highlight the unpreparedness of our societies to deal with such complex issues. But Mess is the most optimistic and also takes charge of making practical suggestions. While the tech train has already left the station, we can still do something to chart its future paths.
He points, as an example, to the successes of the 1987 Montreal Protocol which are a great model of international cooperation and solidarity. The treaty ratified by 197 countries has played a vital role in reducing the release of halogenated chlorofluorocarbons from aerosols and refrigeration systems that threaten the ozone layer.
He also points to the 1975 Asilomar conference in which 140 scientists defined the ground rules for recombinant DNA research as a handbook for self-regulation.
In the same way that ecological activists in the 1960s began to sound the alarm about environmental degradation, today aware and informed people must begin to act and fight for these new issues to become part of the governments' political agenda.
For the moment, the rise of populism, the shaky architecture of the European Union, the turmoil of the Middle East and the disputes of the South China Sea leave little room on the political agenda for other issues. But soon, together, our societies will need to become increasingly aware of these rapidly accelerating and emerging technologies and think carefully about their potential use. Playing God is a dangerous game. A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.
