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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
After a year of procrastinating reading this book, I finally did it. It's done. Now excuse me while I crumble into little pieces devoid of meaning.
This book looks into the forces that shaped humans and society as we know it in order to speculate about the future and the changes that we could expect to see (as this book was written in 2016, some of those predictions actually already came true or are about to). It takes a look into religion, politics, and ideological movements, from our hunter-gatherer days to right now. Much of the book it's spent on this, as a way to establish a baseline for the predictions about what's to come. So obviously, as someone who lied awake at night wondering about human evolution and the concept of society, I loved it.
However, this book doesn't look into the future as much as the blurb claims to. Harari makes some predictions based on the new religions that are already shaping our thinking, but he also points out that much can change and there's no point in speculating about a new race with a new way of thinking and functioning because we would be judging it against our understanding of life and of the world and that can be significantly different for this not-so-hypothetical new race of updated humans. Therefore, only a small section of the but is dedicated to the attempt of making sense of the future. And thank non-existing-God for that. Even the nihilist in me can't fandom a future where humans become obsolete by choice, but apparently that's where we're headed. In his exploration of the future, Harari mainly presents the reader with two possible new religions, as he labels them, and how they could shape our future thining and technological development. What bordered me was that this reflection seemed to be happening in a vacuum, disregarding factors such as potential opposing social movements and the real threat of climate change and how that could play into our decision making.
But this is only a small criticism, as I took a lot out of this book and will certainly come back to it every once in a while to read some passages I highlighted as food for thought. In my opinion, that's the beauty of Yuval Noah Harari's books: they may be an oversimplification of much more complex topics, but they make us think about ourselves in new and different ways.
This book looks into the forces that shaped humans and society as we know it in order to speculate about the future and the changes that we could expect to see (as this book was written in 2016, some of those predictions actually already came true or are about to). It takes a look into religion, politics, and ideological movements, from our hunter-gatherer days to right now. Much of the book it's spent on this, as a way to establish a baseline for the predictions about what's to come. So obviously, as someone who lied awake at night wondering about human evolution and the concept of society, I loved it.
However, this book doesn't look into the future as much as the blurb claims to. Harari makes some predictions based on the new religions that are already shaping our thinking, but he also points out that much can change and there's no point in speculating about a new race with a new way of thinking and functioning because we would be judging it against our understanding of life and of the world and that can be significantly different for this not-so-hypothetical new race of updated humans. Therefore, only a small section of the but is dedicated to the attempt of making sense of the future. And thank non-existing-God for that. Even the nihilist in me can't fandom a future where humans become obsolete by choice, but apparently that's where we're headed. In his exploration of the future, Harari mainly presents the reader with two possible new religions, as he labels them, and how they could shape our future thining and technological development. What bordered me was that this reflection seemed to be happening in a vacuum, disregarding factors such as potential opposing social movements and the real threat of climate change and how that could play into our decision making.
But this is only a small criticism, as I took a lot out of this book and will certainly come back to it every once in a while to read some passages I highlighted as food for thought. In my opinion, that's the beauty of Yuval Noah Harari's books: they may be an oversimplification of much more complex topics, but they make us think about ourselves in new and different ways.
informative
slow-paced
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
This book is very interesting and insightful, makes you think a lot and I it gives you some new (and sometimes weird) perspectives overall I think the content of the book is valuable.
However, and there has to be a however since I rated it 3, I lost the motivation to read it at the end. Maybe I just didn't vibe with the author's writing style. I was really invested in the first half of the book and started to lose interest gradually, with the exception of the last page that's probably my favorite part.
However, and there has to be a however since I rated it 3, I lost the motivation to read it at the end. Maybe I just didn't vibe with the author's writing style. I was really invested in the first half of the book and started to lose interest gradually, with the exception of the last page that's probably my favorite part.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
This was ok. There’s was a lot of information there but for some reason it felt disjointed. I LOVED Sapiens but this one just didn’t give the same vibe. It feels like its made up of scraps from Sapiens and expanded. I don’t know. I still liked it but not nearly as much as I liked Sapiens.
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
The book as a whole have several problems that all stem from being really broad in scope. Some of the examples like IBM`s Watson and sabermetricans overvalue the gain from computerization. Where there Watson hasn`t really had any big effect on medicine and the best results come from combination from coaches and sabermetricans. The history parts suffer from the author trying to put his frame down over the past. The automation of work does also not currently happen at a scale larger than prior automation under the industrial revolution and is probably not different in kind. Mostly the book is useful for the questions that it asks and not really for its answers.
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
wrote a whole review on it as an assignment, would and could do it again