Homo Deus - A story of tomorrow

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Homo Deus - A Tale of Tomorrow ( Hebrew ההיסטוריה של המחר) is a non-fiction book by Yuval Noah Harari , Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . It was published in 2015 in Israel in Hebrew . The English version entitled Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow , which was translated by the author himself , was released in 2016. The German translation from English was done by Andreas Wirthensohn; it was published by CHBeck in 2017 . The 10th revised edition of the German edition appeared in 2019.

In his 2011 book A Brief History of Mankind , Harari explained how the human species conquered the earth. Homo Deus builds on this work and is about the future. The opening credits read: “What will happen to us and our planet when the new technologies give humans godlike abilities - creative as well as destructive - and raise life itself to a completely new level of evolution?” The author spans a lot Arc. His statements are underpinned by findings from various scientific disciplines as well as illustrated by historical events and concrete examples. He not only refers to the cultural area of ​​the western world , but also to other regional cultural areas and their epochs. Harari doesn't want to predict the future, but he wants to say what could happen if no one intervenes. He outlines a picture of the future that, in view of the new technical possibilities, we will construct a “Homo Deus” who can do everything better than us. He asks what remains of us and the modern religion of humanism ? Harari summarizes: "This book traces the origins of our present conditioning in order to loosen its grip and enable us to think far more imaginatively than before about our future."

Summary

Introduction and Chapter 1: The New Human Agenda

The author first tries to answer the question of what the most important goals of mankind could be at the beginning of the third millennium. For the first time in history, the majority of people no longer have to worry about how to survive hunger, disease and war. Far more people are dying today from obesity, old age, or from non-contagious diseases such as cancer and heart disease. As pleasant as this result is, history teaches us that humanity is not satisfied with what has been achieved. She will pursue new, ambitious goals. According to Harari, these are the pursuit of immortality, happiness and godliness.

Part 1: Homo sapiens is conquering the world

  • Chapter 2. The Anthropocene : Over the past 70,000 years Homo sapiens has become the most important force that has changed global ecology in an unprecedented radical manner. Thanks to his intelligence, he subjugated the animals and, thanks to the scientific knowledge gained, made himself the most powerful ruler of the globe.
  • Chapter 3. The human spark: The superiority of humans is not based solely on their intelligence, but on their ability to flexibly cooperate with countless people, including strangers, and in particular on the creation of fictional entities such as B. money, gods, nations, world views, laws, etc. Harari calls these instances intersubjectivity , which represent a third category in addition to objectivity and subjectivity .

Part 2: Homo sapiens gives meaning to the world

  • Chapter 4. The Storytellers: Fictions enabled us to better cooperate with third parties. In the 21st century we will be able to create even more powerful fictions with the help of biotechnology and computer algorithms . They can control our existence, beyond that, change our body, our brain and our spirit and they can create new virtual worlds.
  • Chapter 5. The Strange Couple: Religion and Science both belong in the realm of intersubjectivity, they are not in complete opposition to one another. Religion provides the moral justification, it is about order. When it comes to the search for truth, science is ultimately about power.
  • Chapter 6. The Modern Pact: In most cultures so far, people believed they were playing a part in some large-scale cosmic plan. Modern thinking today renounces meaning, it consists of a pact between science and humanism. The result is a constant pursuit of power in a meaningless universe, with economic growth being the key driver.
  • Chapter 7. The Humanist Revolution: Instead of religions that worship a higher power, the humanist worldview is the dominant creed today. Our free will as an individual or as a community is the supreme authority. We trust our own feelings, desires, experiences and thoughts. From this we shape our ethical values. Humanism comes in three different forms: socialism / communism , liberalism or evolutionism / national socialism . Their respective meaning has changed over time and depending on technical developments. At the beginning of the 21st century, liberalism is dominant, but that can change with further technical changes.

Part 3: Homo sapiens is losing control

  • Chapter 8. The Time Bomb in the Laboratory: Today's neuroscience shows us that human thoughts and actions are the result of electrochemical processes in the brain. These findings lead to the conclusion that the image of the free choice of the individual is a fallacy.
  • Chapter 9. The great decoupling: Today we are in the process of developing machines with new forms of intelligence which, unlike humans, are not influenced by consciousness. The machines will be able to outperform us. This makes man replaceable. There is no reason to believe that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms could never do better. After all, the new technologies of the 21st century can rob the individual of their power and instead entrust it to non-human algorithms. The result would be a mass of useless people and a small elite of optimized supermen.
  • Chapter 10. The Ocean of Consciousness: The new technical possibilities will open up ways to optimize our body, brain and spirit. They will give us access to new states of consciousness. The human will, sanctified in humanism, can be manipulated; this makes it questionable as the highest authority.
  • Chapter 11. The data religion: Harari explains that the universe can be understood as data streams that are linked by algorithms. At its core it is about the collection and analysis of information. The human imagination is simply the product of biochemical algorithms. The homocentric worldview of humanism is being replaced by a data-centric worldview. Conscious intelligence is being replaced by superior non-conscious algorithms.

The book closes with the question: "What will become of our society, our politics and our everyday life, if unconscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we do ourselves?"

reception

In September 2018, two years after the English version was published, there were already 24 translations of the book on the world market. The Time Magazine lists "Homo Deus" as one of the ten best non-fiction books of the year 2017. Even in Germany it could after his release in early 2017 from March on the mirror - bestseller place, in April reached the second place and was up to Always among the top 20 of this list at the end of the year, making it one of the most successful non-fiction books of the year.

The work has received a lot of media coverage around the world. Reviews appeared and a. in: Die Zeit , Der Tagesspiegel , Der Spiegel , New York Times , and The Guardian . It looks Adriane praise in the time as a wake-up call for humanity to prevent the loss of control on the technology. The book is also being analyzed in a similar way by the international press - this is how Tim Adams describes in the Guardian a conflict between intelligence and consciousness , which decides on the loss of humans to the machines, and Jennifer Senior in the New York Times hopes that the reset will be done in time Button to prevent a depicted scenario like in the Westworld TV series . In the Tagesspiegel , Wolfgang Schneider points out that the author describes his chat about the discontinued human model as a way of thinking. The swan song for soul , free will and individualism is performed with too much enthusiasm for the punch line . On Deutschlandfunk , Susanne Billig attests to the author a stylistically brilliant, interdisciplinary courageous prognosis , but she lacks the option of doubt when portraying the godlike human being created by technology . Claudia Mäder in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung finds the propagation of transhumanism and the overcoming of the liberal-humanistic basic order too dramatic because she believes that such an exact prediction of the future is not possible.

expenditure

  • Homo deus: a story of tomorrow . Translated from the English by Andreas Wirthensohn. CHBeck, Munich 2017 (1st edition) to 2018 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-3-406-70401-7 .
  • Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow . From the Hebrew by Yuval Noah Harari. Harper, New York 2017, ISBN 9780062464316 .
  • Homo deus: a brief history of tomorrow . From the Hebrew by Harvill Secker, London 2015, ISBN 978-191-070-187-4 .

See also

  • A Brief History of Humanity - This previously published book by Harari describes looking back in time and explains how the human species conquered the earth.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the DNB , accessed on October 15, 2018.
  2. ↑ Homo Deus . In: CH Beck . Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  3. ↑ Claire Howorth: The Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of 2017 ( EN ) In: Time Magazine . November 21, 2017. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
  4. ↑ Bestseller 2017: The best-selling non-fiction books of the year . In: Spiegel . December 31, 2017. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
  5. ↑ Adrian Lobe: Homo Deus - Is humanity soon end ... . In: Zeit Online . April 10, 2017. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Schneider: Farewell to the soul . In: Der Tagesspiegel . April 16, 2017. Retrieved October 21, 2018.
  7. ↑ Rule computers . In: Der Spiegel 9/2017 . Retrieved October 21, 2018.
  8. ↑ Jennifer Senior: Review: 'Homo Deus' Foresees a Godlike Future. (Ignore the Techno-Overlords. ) . In: The New York Times , February 15, 2017. Retrieved October 5, 2018. 
  9. ↑ Siddhartha Mukherjee: The Future of Humans? One Forecaster Calls for Obsolescence (EN) . In: The New York Times , March 13, 2017. Retrieved October 5, 2018. 
  10. ↑ Tim Adams: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari review - chilling (EN) . In: The Guardian , September 11, 2016. Retrieved October 22, 2018. 
  11. ↑ Susanne Billig : Why man is his own god . In: Deutschlandfunk , February 21, 2017. Accessed December 1, 2019. 
  12. ↑ Claudia Mäder: Back to the future . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 25, 2017. Accessed December 1, 2019.