Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Summary)
What if an external algorithm, like Google's or Amazon's, could know you better than you know yourself? What if it knew you were gay before you did, or that you were considering a divorce before your spouse did? This isn't science fiction. Harari argues that as we feed our data to external systems, we are voluntarily handing over the authority to make our most intimate decisions, effectively ending the era of human free will.
Death is Just a Technical Problem
For millennia, we've accepted death as an inevitable metaphysical fate. The new mindset of Silicon Valley and the scientific elite is to reframe death as a solvable technical issue, like a computer bug that can be patched with enough ingenuity and resources.
Google's Calico Labs is a real-world research company founded with the explicit goal of "combating aging and associated diseases." Billionaires are investing fortunes into biotech startups focused on life extension, treating the human lifespan not as a fixed limit, but as a system to be engineered and optimized.
The Organism is an Algorithm
The humanist idea of a sacred, indivisible 'self' with free will is being dismantled by modern science. The emerging view is that humans, like all life, are simply complex biochemical algorithms, shaped by genes and environment, whose decisions can be predicted, manipulated, and even surpassed.
Scientists can implant electrodes in a rat's brain and control its movements by remote control. The rat feels it is making its own choices to turn left or right, but its 'will' is being dictated by an external electrical signal. Harari argues that external algorithms, like a social media feed, are beginning to do the same to us.
Dataism is the New Religion
As humanism wanes, a new belief system is rising: Dataism. It worships the flow of information above all else. In this view, the entire universe is a data-processing system, and the ultimate good is to contribute to the flow of data by making everything, including our own experiences, transparent and connected.
When a Dataist gets sick, they don't just go to a doctor (humanism) or pray to a god (theism). They wear a biometric scanner, upload their DNA to a database, and trust that an AI, processing terabytes of global health data, will provide a superior diagnosis. The individual's value is their contribution to the data stream.
The Rise of the 'Useless Class'
As artificial intelligence surpasses human ability in more and more cognitive tasks, billions of people may find themselves economically and politically irrelevant. Unlike past industrial revolutions, this time there may be no new category of jobs for the displaced masses to move into.
A self-driving truck doesn't just replace one driver; a single AI can manage an entire fleet 24/7 without needing sleep, breaks, or a salary. The millions of professional drivers worldwide won't become obsolete because they're lazy, but because they are fundamentally outmatched by a superior algorithm.
