Could be an interesting. Just picking around on it now. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to his audiobook "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind".
readandlaugh.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/homo_deus_a_brief_history_of_tomorrow_pdf.pdf"The best thing about it is the way Harari effortlessly threads different fields of anthropology, biology, neuroscience, behavioural economics, economics, psychology, history and philosophy."
Excerpt somewhat related to the present topic (apologies for the length... just a taste of the book):
p.217-220
Where Has All the Power Gone?
Political scientists also increasingly interpret human political structures as data-processing systems.
Like capitalism and communism, so democracies and dictatorships are in essence competing
mechanisms for gathering and analysing information. Dictatorships use centralised processing
methods, whereas democracies prefer distributed processing. In the last decades democracy gained
the upper hand because under the unique conditions of the late twentieth century, distributed
processing worked better. Under alternative conditions â those prevailing in the ancient Roman
Empire, for instance â centralised processing had an edge, which is why the Roman Republic fell and
power shifted from the Senate and popular assemblies into the hands of a single autocratic emperor.
This implies that as data-processing conditions change again in the twenty-first century, democracy
might decline and even disappear. As both the volume and speed of data increase, venerable
institutions like elections, parties and parliaments might become obsolete â not because they are
unethical, but because they donât process data efficiently enough. These institutions evolved in an era
when politics moved faster than technology. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Industrial
Revolution unfolded slowly enough for politicians and voters to remain one step ahead of it and
regulate and manipulate its course. Yet whereas the rhythm of politics has not changed much since the
days of steam, technology has switched from first gear to fourth. Technological revolutions now
outpace political processes, causing MPs and voters alike to lose control.
The rise of the Internet gives us a taste of things to come. Cyberspace is now crucial to our daily
lives, our economy and our security. Yet the critical choices between alternative web designs werenât
taken through a democratic political process, even though they involved traditional political issues
such as sovereignty, borders, privacy and security. Did you ever vote about the shape of cyberspace?
Decisions made by web designers far from the public limelight mean that today the Internet is a free
and lawless zone that erodes state sovereignty, ignores borders, abolishes privacy and poses perhaps
the most formidable global security risk. Whereas a decade ago it hardly registered on the radar,
today hysterical officials are predicting an imminent cyber 9/11.
Governments and NGOs consequently conduct intense debates about restructuring the Internet, but
it is much harder to change an existing system than to intervene at its inception. Besides, by the time
the cumbersome government bureaucracy makes up its mind about cyber regulation, the Internet has
morphed ten times. The governmental tortoise cannot keep up with the technological hare. It is
overwhelmed by data. The NSA may be spying on your every word, but to judge by the repeated
failures of American foreign policy, nobody in Washington knows what to do with all the data. Never
in history did a government know so much about whatâs going on in the world â yet few empires have
botched things up as clumsily as the contemporary United States. Itâs like a poker player who knows
what cards his opponents hold, yet somehow still manages to lose round after round.
In the coming decades, it is likely that we will see more Internet-like revolutions, in which
technology steals a march on politics. Artificial intelligence and biotechnology might soon overhaul
our societies and economies â and our bodies and minds too â but they are hardly a blip on our
political radar. Our current democratic structures just cannot collect and process the relevant data fast
enough, and most voters donât understand biology and cybernetics well enough to form any pertinent
opinions. Hence traditional democratic politics loses control of events, and fails to provide us with
meaningful visions for the future.
That doesnât mean we will go back to twentieth-century-style dictatorships. Authoritarian regimes
seem to be equally overwhelmed by the pace of technological development and the speed and volume
of the data flow. In the twentieth century, dictators had grand visions for the future. Communists and
fascists alike sought to completely destroy the old world and build a new world in its place.
Whatever you think about Lenin, Hitler or Mao, you cannot accuse them of lacking vision. Today it
seems that leaders have a chance to pursue even grander visions. While communists and Nazis tried
to create a new society and a new human with the help of steam engines and typewriters, todayâs
prophets could rely on biotechnology and super-computers.
In science-fiction films, ruthless Hitler-like politicians are quick to pounce on such new
technologies, putting them in the service of this or that megalomaniac political ideal. Yet flesh-and-blood politicians in the early twenty-first century, even in authoritarian countries such as Russia, Iran
or North Korea, are nothing like their Hollywood counterparts. They donât seem to plot any Brave
New World. The wildest dreams of Kim Jong-un and Ali Khamenei donât go much beyond atom
bombs and ballistic missiles: that is so 1945. Putinâs aspirations seem confined to rebuilding the old
Soviet zone, or the even older tsarist empire. Meanwhile in the USA, paranoid Republicans accuse
Barack Obama of being a ruthless despot hatching conspiracies to destroy the foundations of
American society â yet in eight years of presidency he barely managed to pass a minor health-care
reform. Creating new worlds and new humans is far beyond his agenda.
Precisely because technology is now moving so fast, and parliaments and dictators alike are
overwhelmed by data they cannot process quickly enough, present-day politicians are thinking on a
far smaller scale than their predecessors a century ago. In the early twenty-first century, politics is
consequently bereft of grand visions. Government has become mere administration. It manages the
country, but it no longer leads it. It makes sure teachers are paid on time and sewage systems donât
overflow, but it has no idea where the country will be in twenty years.
To some extent, this is a very good thing. Given that some of the big political visions of the
twentieth century led us to Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the Great Leap Forward, maybe we are better
off in the hands of petty-minded bureaucrats. Mixing godlike technology with megalomaniac politics
is a recipe for disaster. Many neo-liberal economists and political scientists argue that it is best to
leave all the important decisions in the hands of the free market. They thereby give politicians the
perfect excuse for inaction and ignorance, which are reinterpreted as profound wisdom. Politicians
find it convenient to believe that the reason they donât understand the world is that they need not
understand it.
Yet mixing godlike technology with myopic politics also has its downside. Lack of vision isnât
always a blessing, and not all visions are necessarily bad. In the twentieth century, the dystopian Nazi
vision did not fall apart spontaneously. It was defeated by the equally grand visions of socialism and
liberalism. It is dangerous to trust our future to market forces, because these forces do whatâs good
for the market rather than whatâs good for humankind or for the world. The hand of the market is blind
as well as invisible, and left to its own devices it may fail to do anything about the threat of global
warming or the dangerous potential of artificial intelligence.
Some people believe that there is somebody in charge after all. Not democratic politicians or
autocratic despots, but rather a small coterie of billionaires who secretly run the world. But such
conspiracy theories never work, because they underestimate the complexity of the system. A few
billionaires smoking cigars and drinking Scotch in some back room cannot possibly understand
everything happening on the globe, let alone control it. Ruthless billionaires and small interest groups
flourish in todayâs chaotic world not because they read the map better than anyone else, but because
they have very narrow aims. In a chaotic system, tunnel vision has its advantages, and the billionairesâ
power is strictly proportional to their goals. If the worldâs richest man would like to make another
billion dollars he could easily game the system in order to achieve his goal. In contrast, if he would
like to reduce global inequality or stop global warming, even he wonât be able to do it, because the
system is far too complex.
Yet power vacuums seldom last long. If in the twenty-first century traditional political structures
can no longer process the data fast enough to produce meaningful visions, then new and more efficient
structures will evolve to take their place. These new structures may be very different from any
previous political institutions, whether democratic or authoritarian. The only question is who will
build and control these structures. If humankind is no longer up to the task, perhaps it might give
somebody else a try.
