Speaking at the 2018 Annual Meeting organized by Ethikrat (the German
Ethics Council), Prof. Yuval Noah Harari lays out the principles of
humanism, and explains how they are deeply challenged by the latest
developments in science and technology.
Related links:
"We should never underestimate human stupidity. But we shouldn’t
underestimate human wisdom."
Today the biggest political question in the world is “who owns the
data?” And it’s not very important in the politics of most countries. I mean,
if you think back a thousand years to the Middle Ages, the No. 1 political
question was “who owns the land?” If too much land was owned by too few people,
you got a very hierarchical society of aristocracy and peasants and commoners.
Then you had the struggle between communism and capitalism about who owns the
factories. If too much is owned by too few people, you get a very unequal
society. Now the No. 1 asset is data, and more and more of the data is being
monopolized by a fraction of humanity, by a few companies and governments.
"The main product of the economy in the 21st century will not be
textiles and weapons and vehicles but bodies and brains and minds."
Related links:
