Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

Music, according to this view, is mathematical patterns. Mathematics can describe every musical piece, as well as the relations between any two pieces.

In the twenty-first century, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view.

Scholars in the life sciences and social sciences should ask themselves whether we miss anything when we understand life as data processing and decision-making.

Dataism thereby threatens to do to Homo sapiens what Homo sapiens has done to all other animals.

Yet broadening our horizons can backfire by making us more confused and inactive than before.

Humans are relinquishing authority to the free market, to crowd wisdom and to external algorithms partly because we cannot deal with the deluge of data.

In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. We just don’t know what to pay attention to, and often spend our time investigating and debating side issues.

Today having power means knowing wh...