I try to be very careful about how I use technology and really make sure that I'm using it for the purposes that I define instead of allowing it to kind of shape my purposes for me. My attention is one of the most important resources I have, and the smartphone is constantly trying to grab my attention. How has your work changed your relationship to technology? I don't have a smartphone. "Basically, the same kind of technology that enables you to hook people on YouTube clips also helps you to save a million lives a year. No, the most important investment is really in building this more flexible mind or personality.
#Author yuval noah harari how to#
The most important investment that people can make is not to learn a particular skill-”I'll learn how to code computers,” or “I will learn Chinese,” or something like that. And a weapon you will have the psychological flexibility to go through this transition at age 30, and 40, and 50, and 60. But beyond a certain age-when you get to 40, 50-change is stressful.
Teenagers or 20-somethings, they are quite good with change. Even if there is a new job, and even if you get support from the government to kind of retrain yourself, you need a lot of mental flexibility to manage these transitions. I think the most important thing is to invest in emotional intelligence and mental balance, because the hardest challenges will be psychological. But if you're an average person then you will need a lot of help. If you are very rich and successful, then of course you have all the resources in the world to cushion yourself against these kinds of upheavals. What steps have you taken to guard against this? As individuals, what we can do is quite limited. The best defense against that? An emotional flexibility that allows for constant reinvention, and knowing yourself well enough that you don’t get drawn into the deep Internet traps set for you. Imagine what it might be capable of in another fifteen years.) That means automation will likely disrupt your current job (and your next one, and the one after that), and you’ll be the target of attention-grabbing, behavior-modifying algorithms so exponentially effective you won’t even realize you’re being targeted. Now it’s so efficient at micro-targeting that it helped sway a democratic election. (Fifteen years ago, Facebook wasn’t even around. The prospects are… gnarly.īasically: technological innovation and artificial intelligence are going to accelerate at a pace we’ve yet to really comprehend. First, he chronicled the history of mankind in his book Sapiens then, he followed it up with thought-provoking contemplations about the future of mankind in Homo Deus and in his latest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he’s looking at what’s happening right now and trying to figure out what it means for the rest of this century.
After all, he’s made a career out of studying humans. Yuval Noah Harari just may know you better than you know yourself.