21 Lessons for the 21st Century Paperback – Import, 30 August 2018

Basically, they are giving pirated third class paper quality version. This is expected from Flipkart but not Amazon.People might argue that expectations should be low for a low price, but I say that the Big discounts displayed on products should also be according to similar quality stuff, and not the original publication.

Essential reading. Quality of ideas, opinions and writing in line with his earlier books.A note to Penguin and its imprints. Please stop printing with Replika. The quality of print is abysmal and this is the second such experience for me (Devlok 2). I know of others who have felt the same. If this continues, readers will complain in droves and/or stop buying your books printed with Replika. So change the quality of printing or the Press in question.

With a simple narrative, Yuval Noah Harari, one of the most innovative thinkers of our times, envisions the most profound changes expected in our lifetime. Simply Brilliant! My next must read will be Homo Deus & Sapiens.

The quality of the product is really good for its price. The book, I mean its Yoval Noah Harari!!! His work is impeccable. I would recommend this book to every millennial who has unanswered questions.

Highly enlightening. Well written in par with Harari’s earlier two books. An excellent exposure to the darker side of the developments taking place in the recent years in technology and AI. He wants us to be alert and to keep pace with those developments as otherwise we will be left far behind. An interesting narration about how many many of our unskilled jobs like driving, clerical, writing, teaching would be grabbed partly by AI. Many of our day today activities would be automated. Consequently we would be jobless unless we learn new skills. Though he is not giving solutions, his alertness sounds a bit not deliberately positive, for us to think seriously. No doubt a page turner, educates well.

The book was printed on extremely bad paper and the ink in places was shown on both sides making it very hard to read. Also several pages in the introduction were bound in the wrong order. The book also lacked illustrations and drawings, possibly to save the printer some money.I wouldn't recommend this book despite its low price. What you save in money, you lose in quality. It would probably be a better investment to get a slightly more expensive copy which is printer by a proper publishing house.

This book is a fascinating read for those interested in an unbiased pursuit of Truth. Truth as they say is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Yet, the most intelligent species, relies more on stories than on verifiable facts, and are the only species on earth that can weave stories.Be it Fascism, Communism or Liberalism, the great political stories; or those derived from religion and culture, all of them have their share of fiction. Yet stories are all around (accepted as true), and act as the glue to unite people on a common theme. People forget facts but not a well woven story.Our allegiance to stories and beliefs assumes that our nation or religion or culture is central to the planet, the best and the most important of all. Hence, our civilization is trapped in several such disparate compartments and is at war with itself. It is sad to see that the species that has abundance of Intelligence is bankrupt in Consciousness. We are staring at the threats of nuclear war, terrorism, and global warming. We see acute human suffering despite the enormous wealth and technological progress.The book begins with the challenges the world might face if AI and Bioengineering converge. In the past, human inequality on an economic scale was a result of highly skewed distribution of wealth. In the future, economic Inequality might seem to be a better choice, since most humans would be made Irrelevant by those who control data and information. There could be for the first time, genetic superiority of those who can manipulate their DNA, live longer and even have substantial enhancement of their cerebral power by coupling their brains with super computers in real time.Morality means ‘reduced suffering’ and not just ‘following divine commands’ argues the author. The ability to understand human suffering and to end it comes with compassion. Commitment to truth and compassion result in the concept of Equality of all human beings. It is not possible to find Truth without Freedom to think, investigate and experiment. It takes Courage to question the status-quo and admit our ignorance and venture into the unknown. ‘Questions you cannot answer are better for you than answers that you cannot question’. With this framework, Secular people take Responsibility for creating a better world, than leaving it to any unknown higher power.Politicians of all hues understand the power of stories and their voter psychology. They operate systematically in four stages, as explained in this book. 1. Downsize the issue, create a big Villain vs the rest of us 2. Focus on a touching story that arouses emotions and melts our hearts 3. Weave a conspiracy theory or a big scam that threatens the culture or nation. 4. The white knight in shining armor, a leader or a dogma or belief, finally arrives to redeem us… and he rules till the cycle turns against him.I appreciate the author’s Courage for an unbiased and vocal analysis of several political, cultural, religious, and historical perspectives. This is a genuine pursuit of Truth with an open mind.Finally, there is convergence of knowledge that emerges from the vastness and depth of this study. This is where the book takes an unexpected but remarkably interesting and insightful turn. The Truth is that the cause of all our tensions and misery in life are a creation of our MIND. Life is not a Story. It has meaning. The last two chapters of this book (Meaning and Meditation) are the culmination of the understating of this Wisdom. This is the lesson humanity should learn for eternity.Touches our heart, mind, and soul in search of the eternal Truth.

It is a Yual book and it stands by its pedigree. Each line credible and insightful the master of his genre, not only this, his other two books are also masterpieces for the readers.In this book he reveals the heartening secret of his focus, it is from the land of the yogis, he got the power of focus to think so deeply and to write so profoundly from our own venerable Goenka, the saint of vipasana!

Harari’s first two books, ‘Sapiens’, ‘and ‘Homo Deus’ have been critically acclaimed, and one wonders what else can he come up with. This question is normally asked of fiction writers, but Harari’s first two books have been so tremendously popular to the extent that they were likened to best-selling novels. This, his third book, does not disappoint. It is a book of 21 essays on different subjects beginning with ‘Disillusionment’, ‘Work’, ‘Liberty’, and ‘Equality’ under Part I, entitled, ‘The Technological Challenge’. The book has a total of five Parts. The other four are: ‘The Political Challenge’, Despair and Hope’, Truth’, and ‘Resilience’. Harari’s thoughts spring from the basic, but important question, ‘What can we say about the meaning of life today?’ In order to put the age-old question into the context of today, Harari examines the scientific and cultural changes that have transformed human societies across the world. One major change wrought by technology is the phenomenon in which we get increasingly distanced from our own bodies, and are being absorbed into smartphones and computers. Harari shows how ‘benign patriotism’ can so easily be transformed into ultra-nationalism; form the belief that ‘My nation is unique’ (every nation is) to ‘My nation is supreme’. Once we get to that, war and strife is, frighteningly, just a step away. He devotes a chapter each to ‘immigration’ and ‘terrorism’ because these are the two bogeymen of the world – not just the Western world. Harari fears that when New York or London eventually sinks below the Atlantic Ocean, people will be blaming Bush, Blair and Obama for focussing on the wrong front. Given the undertones of religious conflicts and differences in the wars that an American-led West had inflicted on various parts of the world, Harari had much to say in his chapters on ‘God’ and ‘Secularism’. He tries to show how irrational belief in a personal God is. ‘Science cannot explain the “Big Bang”, they exclaim, “so that must be God’s doing”…After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces’. Not to mention abortion, eating pork, and drinking beer. What does it mean ‘Not to use the name of God in vain’? Harari suggests that it should mean that ‘we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatred’. He exposes the problems of dogmatism, and warns against the illusion that the falsity in one’s creed or ideology will never be allowed to happen. ‘if you believe in an absolute truth revealed in a transcendent power’, he writes, ‘you cannot allow yourself to admit any error – for that would nullify your whole story. But if you believe in a quest for truth by fallible humans, admitting blunders is an inherent part of the game’. Harari’s conclusion is a treat to read and has much to commend in the way he reconciles religious beliefs and rational thinking. Humans love story-telling, he writes, and the answers to the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ lie in the stories – but we do not have just one story each. And this is crucial. We not just a Muslim, or an Italian, or a capitalist. We do not have just one identity as a human. And we have many stories. We must not shut them out for the sake of one favourite.

Unlike Sapiens (about the past) and Homo Deus (the future), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a series of commentaries, thoughts and meditations on the present. Some of the main themes are ones which readers of the earlier books will be familiar with – for example, how what separates man from our ape cousins is our ability to believe in and live by stories. We are able to believe in things (religion, democracy, money) which have no objective reality or independent existence, or be part of communities (nations, corporations, online) of people we don’t know. A historian, polymath, atheist and cynic, Harari is capable of insights of dazzling simplicity yet which are backed by deep reading and thought. Here are just a few, taken out of context but I promise it’s worth following up the context:The revolutions in biotech and infotech are made by engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions…Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese will take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border. He never warned voters that algorithms will take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.Humans have two abilities – physical and cognitive. The former have been partly supplemented by machines. Artificial Intelligence is challenging the latter…. Communism has no answer to automation, as the masses lose their economic value and become irrelevant.Artificial Intelligence and human stupidity – if we concentrate too much on AI and not enough on human consciousness, AI will end up merely empowering the stupidity of humans.Globalisation has resulted in growing inequality – the richest 100 own more than poorest 4 billion – and might in time lead to speciation. [People and species are opposite - species split, whereas people coalesce into larger groups, though mergers change.] Challenges are now supra-national – there are no national solutions to global warming. Nations have no answer to technological disruption. The nationalist wave [which he attributes in some measure to nostalgia] cannot turn the clock back to 1939 or 1914. Europe is a good example of supra-national solutions [he thinks Brexit is a bad idea]. Early humans faced problems which local tribes couldn’t handle (for example, Nile floods). Nowadays problems are supra-national.Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations. Consider the Christian story. It has the flimsiest of foundations…. Yet enormous global institutions have been built on top of that story, and their weight presses down with such overwhelming force that they keep the story in place.This is another intellectual tour de force from Harari, though as other reviewers have said it’s essential to have read the other two books first.

Having read this book, I'm not sure that I have learnt the 21 lessons that were promised in the title. The book however is certainly thought-provoking and debates many of the questions I have asked myself about the future. The main theme is that the pace of change is much faster than at any other time in human history, and that by 2050 (a date often quoted by the author) life on Earth will look significantly different. Yuval Noah Harari speculates that biotechnology, information technology and 'Big Data algorithms' will reshape the world for Homo sapiens (humans) over the coming decades to the point that the species will cease to exist in its current form by the beginning of the 22nd century. The author debates in detail the role that artificial intelligence and these algorithms will have and how they will influence and possibly even control large aspects of our lives as time goes on.The book begins with a lot of detail about how collection and analysis of huge amounts of data and advances in technology will allow us to even re-engineer our bodies, and in particular our brains, to allow artificial intelligence to know what we are thinking in order for it to make better decisions for us. It goes on to speculate that robots could make huge numbers of people redundant and irrelevant, forcing people to change careers at an increasingly regular rate. There is then a lot of discussion about religion, in particular the author's own Jewish religion, and how fiction has played and continues to play a crucial role in life.I enjoyed the book but if you are looking for life lessons to follow, then it probably isn't the book for you. If you want a glimpse into the (possible) future of the human race and a summary of how we got to the point we are at now, then this is something for you. It is certainly a very well-written book.

This is another remarkable book from the author of Sapiens and Homo Deus. But the reader need not know either of them to appreciate these 21 Lessons. Harari takes a very long view of the history of mankind and the driving forces that shape the world as we know it. Given the pent-up forces for change (especially infotech and biotech) that make bewilderment a normal state of mind, he attempts to offer our children (and us) some ways of preparing for our collective futures.Recognizing and exploding many of the narratives that have allowed the human ape to dominate the planet, he suggests that our children’s education should be characterized by greater humility, respect for the “other” and for the biosphere that we are rapidly destroying. Skills will become obsolete in a decade and therefore in need of constant renewal. The ability to adapt to whatever the world needs will therefore become the vital learning required by the whole of humanity. But “what should we wish to become?” remains the unanswerable question. Identity and philosophy therefore become vital subjects.While the progress of science enables mankind to design and create modified forms of humans, our ethical and philosophical understanding has not kept up the pace of change offered by the sciences. Science fiction allows us to imagine plausible futures, but we should be wary of taking any of them literally, says Harari. But the reality is that any future we will face by 2050 or 2100 is likely to be a future that in 2018 seems like science fiction.This book should be mandatory reading for everybody involved in education and in preparing for the future. That means all of us! Harari’s grasp of historic reality and his wide fields of knowledge are here presented in a manner accessible to us all. As a primer to change management, there can be no better text book. I happen to agree with 99% of his views. But even when I am not convinced, I am driven to consider carefully why not. It is therefore a compulsive read!

I had to stop reading a quarter In the book as I could not bear finishing it. This is utter garbage, biased opinions without any scientific back up narrated in the most condescending tone. I m glad I haven’t read his other 2 book as I can imagine they are similar