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Monday, 24 April 2017

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

A very interesting look at some of the possible important trends emerging as a result of technological change largely.  A look at how human potential is shifting as technology changes.
Some main themes:

- human immortality; the possibility of drastically increasing the human life span

- the slow, step-by-step ceding of control of decisions to technology (smartphones), big data and AI; what happens if (when?) AI begins to set its own priorities

- a brutal look at how humans have manipulated biology to produce the modern meat factory;  the possibility that intelligent computers could come to treat humans in a similar fashion

- the importance of the stories we tell in the evolution of humans and society

- threats to liberalism as humans become less necessary as a work force

- the concept of living beings as algorithms; problems and issues with this idea

A brief summary.  A very dense book.  Worth rereading.

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