Yuval Noah Harari Is Worried About Our Souls - Issue 67: Reboot

Just a few years ago Yuval Noah Harari was an obscure Israeli historian with a knack for playing with big ideas. Then he wrote Sapiens, a sweeping, cross-disciplinary account of human history that landed on the bestseller list and remains there four years later. Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Sapiens proposed a dazzling historical synthesis, and Harari's own quirky pronouncements--"modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history"-- made for compulsive reading. The book also won him a slew of high-profile admirers, including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. In his new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari offers a grab bag of prognostications on everything from new technology to politics and religion. Although he's become a darling of Silicon Valley, Harari is openly critical of how Facebook and other tech companies exploit our personal data, and he worries that online interactions are replacing actual face-to-face encounters. If computer algorithms can know you better than you know yourself, is there any room left for free will? And where does that leave our politics? Harari is a rapid-fire conversationalist who seems to have an opinion about everything. He's remarkably self-assured and clearly enjoys the role of provocateur.