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

Governments manage countries, but they don't lead them. More and more power is with corporations, corporations who are only answering to their share holders

Title: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow 

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

'Sapiens showed us where we came from. In uncertain times, Homo Deus shows us where we're going'

Looking through my Kindle highlights from this book, which I read back in 2017 when it was first released, I am instantly reminded of the brilliance that is Harari. He has a way of bringing up crucial ideas and thoughts and then presenting them in an easily accessible way. This is a great, thought-provoking book encouraging us to question and re-think the world around us. 

Take for example Harari's comment about the possibility of logical bombs already included in codes of our key infrastructure assets. What happens when 'the baddies' (people, corporations or even countries) decides to access these codes and modify them? Many countries in the world are for example rethinking Huawei's involvement in 5G, but what other assets, operations and companies should we be aware of? How can we protect ourselves from a threat which we don't even know what it is? 

Just a few snippets below, in no particular order (and without too much context as that's all included in the book);

• Conflicts should be embraced and not complained about. Conflicts is the starting point for natural selection, something which drives development and improvements. Para phrasing Nietzsche, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger
• The traditional two types of world resources - raw materials and energy - need a third added and that is knowledge
• The more we know, the less we can predict
• Facebook's intrinsic knowledge of the political views of its users, combined with the awareness of who in each community can successfully influence and turn voters
• WEIRD - western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic
• The challenge is to create jobs where humans are better than algorithms, otherwise we risk a huge group of people with nothing to offer society

With things hopefully slowing down after Christmas, I am looking forward to finally start reading Harari's next book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.