21 Lessons for the 21st Century — Yuval Noah Harari

Harari is famous for his thought provoking analysis and descriptions. In this book he touches upon various aspect of life such as AI, nuclear wars, globalized politics, religion, terrorism, etc. but more than lessons he talks about their stance in the 21st Century.

Though he tries to make sense out of them but mostly loses track. As per his estimates, the recent boom of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Algorithms and Bio-Engineering will put billions of humans out of job market and will create a massive new useless class leading to social and political upheavals that no existing ideology be it Liberalism, Nationalism, Islam or any other knows how to handle. Jobs are changing so are skills hence this might come to a reality which we aren’t able to see as a threat.

Machines learn better with more information it can analyse because their abilities enhance with analysis and patterns. Thereby instead of collective discrimination in the 21st Century we might face a growing problem of individual discrimination. Three problems: nuclear wars, ecological collapse and technological disruption are enough to threaten the future of human civilization.

Terrorism according to Harari is a weapon for the marginal and weak segments of the humanity. It is a military strategy that hopes to change the political situation by spreading fear rather than cashing material damage. Like the USA, China, Germany, Japan, Iran and Israel seem to understand that in the 21st Century the most successful strategy is to sit on the fence and let others do the fighting for you.

Revolutionary knowledge do rarely make it to the center because the center is built on existing knowledge. Your brain and yourself are part of the matrix, to escape the matrix you must escape yourself and escaping the narrow definition of self might become a necessary survival skill in today’s time.

I agree with some of his notions but nonetheless this book is his weakest as the title was more about lessons. But the book itself was about his predictions which might or might not come true in the 21st Century.