Yuval Noah Harari

This is Yuval Noah Harari's third book (and our third Note). His first two focused on the past (Sapiens) and the future (Homo Deus). In this one, we "zoom in on the here and now" as we take a look at 21 of the most important things to be thinking about in the 21st century. Like all of his books, this is a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at some globally Big Ideas. Although obviously outside the scope of our normal Optimizing, I think it's important stuff. In the Note we explore dealing with "Disillusionment" (the title of chapter #1) by switching from "panic to bewilderment"), the future of health care and driving (and jobs!), making sure we match our investment in developing AI with an equivalent investment in developing "human consciousness," what we should be teaching our kids (basically, how to Optimize!!), and Yuval's #1 practice: meditation.

Yuval Noah Harari is a brilliant historian and thinker. He has a PhD in history from Oxford and is a tenured professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After finishing my Note on his first bestselling book Sapiens I immediately picked up this one. While Sapiens features a “A Brief History of Humankind,” Homo Deus gives us “A Brief History of Tomorrow.” Wonder what the future might look like and how artificial intelligence and biotechnology will fundamentally change the world and our species? Well, this is the book for you. It’s incredibly well-written and thoughtful and thought provoking. I HIGHLY recommend it. Big Ideas we explore include how Harari developed such an extraordinary mind (hint: 10,000+ hours of meditation and no smartphone), why we should study history (hint: to reimagine a better future), the 21st century's Big 3: Immortality + Happiness + Divinity (which results in an upgrade from Homo sapiens to Homo deus!), and algorithms--"arguably the single most important concept of the 21st century.

Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in history from Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also has popular online classes and his books have sold over 12 million (!) copies while being translated into dozens of languages. This book is an incredibly smart, well-written, astonishing look at, as per the sub-title, “A Brief History of Humankind.” The breadth and depth and wisdom of Harari's thinking is jaw-dropping. Distilling this 443-page mini-treatise on 70,000 years of Homo Sapien history is, obviously, impossible but we'll have fun taking a quick look at Homo sapiens' family tree (including our parents and brothers and sisters) plus the three revolutions that have shaped our history: The Cognitive Revolution + The Agricultural Revolution + The Scientific Revolution.