A review of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari

 My reading tastes are fairly eclectic. Recently, I heard the term ‘genre slut’ used to describe such a person, and I guess I’m happy to own that. I’ll read pretty much anything—romance, crime, thrillers, science-fiction, fantasy, literary fiction, western, action, humour—you name it. I’m not particularly fussed about the age of the target audience either. I’m just as happy reading a well-written YA novel as something targeted at adults. Heck, I’ll happily read a book aimed at pre-schoolers if the pictures are attractive and the story’s a good one.

Since 2016, when I began to take my writing more seriously, I’ve also read a fair bit of non-fiction related to the craft of writing and the business of indie-publishing. Outside of that, my non-fiction reading is very rare indeed. In the last two years, for instance, the number of non-fiction books I’ve read that weren’t related to writing amounts to exactly two. One of these was Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow, by Yuval Noah Harari.

I discovered it while perusing the shelves of my school library during an English lesson. The somewhat cryptic title piqued my interest, so I put down my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and had a closer look. On the back cover, the blurb contained the following headings:

WAR IS OBSOLETE—You are more likely to commit suicide than be killed in conflict;

FAMINE IS DISAPPEARING—You are more at risk of obesity than starvation;

DEATH IS JUST A TECHNICAL PROBLEM—Equality is out, but immortality is in.

I was hooked.

The book is 500 pages long. I always get a little nervous when starting a book of this kind of length, especially if it’s non-fiction. It’s a considerable time investment to make, and time is one thing of which I don’t have much to spare. I’m not one of those people who will stay with a book until the bitter end—generally, if a book doesn’t keep me hooked I’ll toss it, especially so if it’s non-fiction. Life is too short to read boring books.

Are Organisms just Algorithms?

Thankfully, Harari’s writing is eminently readable and he does a fine job of translating complex ideas into accessible prose. The book covers a lot of territory, diving both into humanity’s past and projecting into its future. Essentially, it argues that modern science has more or less determined that humans are the sum of their biological algorithms, and thus not so far removed from the algorithms that shape our digitally connected lives.

In a world where dataism is poised to overtake humanism as the ‘religion’ that makes the world go round, and where digital algorithms are already better than biological ones at many things and are speeding to surpass them in the areas where they are currently lagging, the book ends by posing the question of what will happen when digital “algorithms come to know us better than we know ourselves.”

I, for one, like to think optimistically about the future. I can’t wait for our algorithmic overlords to come and take my job over, so I can kick back and write books, grow sunflowers and play guitar all day. But I can’t help thinking that once the algorithms are better than me at not only teaching but writing books, growing sunflowers and playing guitar, then it would be hard to blame them for questioning my usefulness.  I’ve seen The Matrix.

Are organisms just algorithms? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

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