Recently a book has come out in Gujarati. It’s called, ‘Vadhamana’ – a technology-powered future. Its author is Vishal Bhadani, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Sanosara-based Lokbharti University. The book’s tag line reads, “Excerpts from the books of international best-selling author-thinker Yuval Noah Harari and Peter Diamendis.” Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian and professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His 3 books “Sapiens: A Brief History of Human Kind,” “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” and “21 Lesions for the 21st Century” have become world famous.
Peter Diamandis is a Greek-American engineer and physician. He has authored the books Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Businesses, Industries and Our Lives and Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World. The Gujarati book contains talks about these two writers and their books. Both Harari and Diamandis talk about the future of mankind in their books. In particular, both describe how the technological revolution will radically change our lives. The speed of that revolution has been proved in the last two decades. What used to take a decade to change, now changes in 2-4 years due to man’s technological progress. A simple example: When laptops and mobile phones arrived, they were purchased for a lifetime. Now its upgraded version comes in 2-4 years.
Hard example: Infectious disease vaccines traditionally take 5 to 10 years to develop. Within a year of the first case of Corona, scientists discovered its genome and within another year, the production of its vaccine started. This is a handy example. Apart from that, changes have come and are still coming at a tremendous speed in the fields of eating and drinking, working, living, studying etc. 21st century is the century of technology. How technology is going to impact our lives in a massive and unimaginable way is nothing short of a science fiction story. What we used to imagine, is being realized today and therefore our future is very exciting.
All societies of the world have an idea of heaven. Heaven is a magical place, where there are extraordinary comforts, where there are no mortal problems and where there is peace and tranquility in life. Little did our forefathers know that technology would one day bring such heaven to earth. The problems and limitations of our life that are shaped naturally have also been natural, and for centuries man could not do anything about them, but with the help of science and technology, man has been able to remove many of the restrictions imposed by God, or say man has achieved the power of God. has been The question is, is the change always for the better? Will it make us happier? As the author asks in this book: What will our social structure be? What will happen to our relationship? How will our religious texts guide us? Will there be an alternative to nature? New global issues will not arise?
Generally we consider a comfortable life as a sign of happiness. In that way, technology has made us happier. Yuval Noah Harari does not believe in this logic. He gives a fascinating account of man’s incredible progress from the jungle age to the technological age of the 21st century, but at the same time warns against man’s track record that life will be dominated by machines (“Man will become God,” he writes). , then questions will arise against human values like happiness, humanity, morality, love etc. and he will have no solutions to them. In Harari’s analysis, man has been evil from the beginning, and as his technological strength has increased, so has his evil. So there is reason enough to believe that in the future his “god-like” power will give unlimited ground to his wickedness. In one sentence – a man will make tremendous external progress, but that will not be a guarantee of his internal progress.
Many intellectuals and scientists consider the tone of Harari’s warning to be pessimistic. The future, as Harari says, is not an empty fantasy, but it is not fair to say that it will happen. It is possible that we will become more liberal, less violent, more educated and become a successful species. Our history also suggests that our different evolutions have contributed to our evolution from a wild species to a domesticated species. Here comes the ‘entry’ of Peter Diamendis. Diamandis also paints an interesting picture of man’s technological future, but he is not as pessimistic or ‘alarmist’ as Harari.
The author writes in this book, “When we are all trying to find more happiness than finding peace, Harari’s story is like a loud alarm…In contrast, Diamandis’s story also raises a lot of hope.” Harari reveals the negative side of the age of technology. His writings or thoughts have some kind of basic pessimistic tone. As a spiritual figure in the Buddhist tradition, Harari warns us of the serious consequences that come with the development of technology and asks the question: Can man really be happy?
Peter Diamendis presents a more positive picture of the age of technology. His tone is relatively optimistic. Diamandis shows how technology will radically change our lives and how it will find solutions to some of the so-called intractable problems and how it will offer us a completely new way of living. These two opposing approaches to technology are not actually opposites, but are areas of each other. It seems to me that the book ‘Vadhamana’ has tried to bridge these alleged conflicting ideas. Finally, a word about Harari. When accused of spreading pessimism, he replied, “I try to be realistic, not pessimistic or optimistic.”