I’m a historian. I really like the past. But most people seem far more interested in what you can tell them about the future.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions were about changing the world outside us. This century will be about changing the world inside us – making new entities with new kinds of brains. We are quickly acquiring powers that were always thought to be divine.
I grew up in a small industrial suburb of Haifa, in Israel. As far back as I remember I was interested in big questions. Who are we? What are we doing here? But the chances to discuss philosophy were quite thin on the ground.
Censorship works now not by hiding things from you but by overwhelming you with facts, so we don’t know what is important and what is not important. I think people are desperate for big, coherent narratives.
I’m vegan, though not completely religious about it. While writing Sapiens I became familiar with how we treat animals in the meat and dairy industries. I was so horrified that I didn’t want to be a part of it any more.
When I was studying in Oxford I couldn’t make sense of my life at all. A good friend said, “Why not try Vipassana meditation?” It’s about letting go of all the different fantasies that fill up our minds. It transformed my life.
Artificial intelligence will use masses of biometric data to tell us how we feel. It will be able to tell whether I am angry or sad or fearful, not only much better than my husband or my mother, but much better than me.
I met my husband Itzik when I got back home to Israel from Oxford in 2002. He is my Internet-of-all-Things.
Ironically maybe the most hopeful example we have that human beings can rise to the challenge of the future is nuclear weapons. They could have destroyed us but so far they have contributed to what is probably the most peaceful era in human history.
Books are beginning to read people in a more careful way than people read books. Your Kindle is analysing all the time how you read. When it is connected to face-recognition algorithms it will be able to know the exact emotional impact of every sentence. Imagine what kind of stories you could create if you knew those things.
Just as the 19th century created the working class, the coming century will create the useless class. Billions of people are likely to have no military or economic function. Providing food and shelter should be possible but how to give meaning to their lives will be the huge political question.
Yuval Noah Harari is the author of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, published by Harvill Secker on 8 September, and Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He will be speaking in London (intelligencesquared.com), Cambridge, Manchester and Bristol in September (po.st/HomoDeusEvents)
