This is the most provocative book I have ever read. It covers a brief history and prediction of the future of homo sapiens. The book starts by arguing that homo sapiens have succeeded to overcome three main conundrums that have been causing deaths and unrest in the lives of homo sapiens for decades. These are war, famine and plagues. The author argues that these problems are not completely obsolete but are no longer causing overwhelming deaths compared to previous decades.
Due to advancements in science and technology, homo sapiens have succeeded to limit deaths caused by plagues, famine has remained a political problem rather than a natural disaster. The author points out that homo sapiens have changed a trajectory towards achieving three main agendas: the pursuit of happiness/bliss, immortality, and divinity. The book predicts that to achieve the three new agendas, homo sapiens will change to be Homo Deus which means that, human beings will no longer depend on Deity rather, they will solely worship and depend on human beings. This leads to a new way of viewing the world (humanism revolution).
Humanism is a view of listening to your inner self to determine and make decisions and solving problems. Its main motto is "the customer is always rights", "strengths of voter" and "your decisions are the most right decisions". According to this book, humanism is broken into three subsectors which are liberal humanism, socialist humanism and evolutionary humanism. Liberal humanism is about the inner self, believing in your guts, while socialist humanism believes in the feelings of others/entire community and not individualistic. Evolutionary humanism focuses on classes (hierarchy) a good example case is Nazism.
The author argues that the development of science debunks humanism based on the fact that there is no inner self or soul. The science expounds that decisions done by human beings are merely pre-determined or random. The development of science has already established better algorithms that are accurate than homo sapiens. In the same case, through other virtual talks, the author has been arguing that the world of democracy is in crisis since it depends/established on the basis of liberal humanism. The crisis is caused by biotechnology changes that debunk the use of human beings' algorithms. The book reveals that scientific algorithms have a better chance of replacing homo sapiens and therefore dominating the future world. This will lead to a new religion known as techno religion encompassing techno humanism and dataism/data religion.
Techno humanism predicts an upgrade of human beings (physically and mentally), this will enable human beings to cope with non-conscious algorithms (biotechnology). Dataism is an advancement in the flow of data (The Internet of All Things), This author says that everything will be connected and everything will be data. He predicts that these changes will replace human beings' usefulness in the world since The Internet of All Things will be better, accurate and probably conscious. The book asks the question if intelligence is better than consciousness?
The author sees that if a current trend of wishes and agenda set by homo sapiens to achieve bliss, divinity and immortality succeed, homo sapiens will extinct, replaced by biotechnology algorithms that will think and act on our behalf. Homo sapiens will be just like a ripple within a cosmic data flow. Some of the questions to be asked after reading this book include:
Will biotechnology algorithms be able to sustain external changes and pressures of the cosmos like the organic algorithms? - Organic algorithms have been in existence for over 70,000 years and still be able to sustain external pressures changes in the world.
What do these changes predicted in the book mean less connected and developed world such as Africa?
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