It may be difficult to believe when you think of Donald Trump, but the age of super-humans is almost upon us. Some people are confident that over the next century genetic engineering, electronic implants, new drugs and the medical defeat of ageing will give rise to a race of beings with capabilities far beyond our own. And what will they do with them? What will clichéd fears about ‘playing God’ mean to our descendants who, by comparison with us, will effectively be gods?
Such questions exercise the historian authors of these two books. Michael Bess’s detailed and humane book adeptly surveys some eye-opening developments in current technology (bionic vision, thought-controlled machines and so forth), and foresees that future humans will enjoy double the average healthy lifespan of today, leading to lives of multiple marriages and career changes. Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestselling Sapiens: A Short History of Humankind, is both slightly vaguer and bolder in his predictions. (Death is just a ‘technical problem’, he argues, at least in terms of senescence. It will probably be solved.) But his book is also more intriguingly rambling, taking in ancient history, painting, war and terrorism along the way.
The first two parts of Homo Deus reinterpret human history in terms of its governing ‘religions’, by which Harari means any system of thought that offers a reliable value system, so that modern science and ‘humanism’ count as religions too. To the question of what separates us from the other animals, he offers the answer that humans are just better at co-operating flexibly with innumerable strangers of their own species. And he, like Bess, is confident that, no matter how much liberal handwringing occurs, human enhancement will actually take place. In medicine, Harari points out, ‘No clear line separates healing from upgrading.’
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in