Homo deus

Social science

Print length: 449 pagesHarper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017

Description

Yuval Noah Harari turns from humanity's past to the ambitions that may shape its future. Arguing that famine, plague, and war have increasingly become manageable challenges rather than inevitable destinies, he asks what societies will pursue next. Possible goals include extending life, engineering happiness, and acquiring powers once attributed to gods. Harari follows those ambitions through biotechnology, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and data-driven systems that may alter bodies, labor, politics, and authority. He also examines humanism—the modern faith in individual experience and choice—and considers what happens if machines know people better than they know themselves. The book is speculative history on a global scale, mapping how technological power could deepen inequality while changing the meaning of intelligence, freedom, and humanity.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Essayistic · Journalistic

Pace

Moderate

Tone

Cerebral · Earnest · Philosophical

Structure

Argumentative

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

FreedomInequalityKnowledge and truthMortalityPolitics and ideologyTechnology and society

About Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and popular science writer who teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books combine history, biology, philosophy, politics, and technology in broad accounts of how human societies acquire coherence and power. Storytelling is a recurring concern: in Sapiens, shared narratives help explain the rise of large societies alongside changes in cognition, agriculture, empire, and science. Harari also examines free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering as historical and philosophical problems. His later work turns these questions toward technology. Homo Deus considers how biotechnology, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and data systems could alter authority, while Nexus places non-human intelligence and misinformation within a longer history of information networks. This scale and cross-disciplinary method distinguish his work as a popular historian.

Books by Yuval Noah Harari

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Language: English
ISBN: 9780062464316

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