Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow appeared in Hebrew in 2015 and in English in 2016. Harari begins by arguing that for the first time in history, famine, epidemic disease and large-scale war have become manageable problems for much of humanity, and he asks what goals will replace them. His answer is that elites will seek immortality, lasting happiness and godlike powers through biotechnology and computing.
The middle of the book examines humanism, the belief system that places individual human feelings and choices at the centre of meaning, and its liberal, socialist and evolutionary variants. Harari then suggests that advances in life sciences and artificial intelligence may undermine humanism by showing that organisms are algorithms and that external systems can know us better than we know ourselves.
He sketches an emerging creed he calls dataism, in which information flow itself becomes the supreme value. Harari presents these as possibilities rather than predictions, intended to widen debate. The book is speculative and often unsettling, and it pairs naturally with Sapiens as a thought experiment about where the story might go next.
Book details
| Author | Yuval Noah Harari |
|---|---|
| First published | 2015 |
| Original language | Hebrew |
| Translated by | Yuval Noah Harari |
| Genre | Popular science |
| Type | Non-fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 450 |
Themes
- Future of humanity
- Artificial intelligence
- Humanism
- Dataism
- Biotechnology and immortality
Who should read it
Readers who enjoyed Sapiens and want a provocative look at how technology might reshape human values.
If you liked this, try
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
- Life 3.0