Quotes About Progress

The new religions are unlikely to emerge from the caves of Afghanistan or from the madrasas of the Middle East. Rather, they will emerge from research laboratories. Just as socialism took over the world by promising salvation through steam and electricity, so in the coming decades new techno-religions may conquer the world by promising salvation through algorithms and genes.

La revolución agrícola es uno de los acontecimientos más polémicos de la historia. Algunos partidarios proclaman que puso a la humanidad en el camino de la prosperidad y el progreso. Otros insisten que la llevó a la perdición. Fue el punto de inflexión, dicen, en el que los sapiens se desprendieron de su simbiosis íntima con la naturaleza y salieron corriendo hacia la codicia y la alienación. Fuera

How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation

Uma das poucas leis férreas da história é que os luxos tendem a se tornar necessidades e a gerar novas obrigações. Uma vez que as pessoas se acostumam a um certo luxo, elas o dão como garantido.

we might fiddle with Homo sapiens to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens. Bionic

When the nuclear age erupted in the 1940s, many forecasts were made about the future nuclear world of the year 2000. When sputnik and Apollo 11 fired the imagination of the world, everyone began predicting that by the end of the century, people would be living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto. Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet.

Al igual que un gobierno que reduce el presupuesto de defensa para aumentar el de educación, los humanos desviaron energía desde los bíceps a las neuronas. No

In the coming decades, it is likely that we will see more Internet-like revolutions, in which technology steals a march on politics.

The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history. There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging.5

When the car replaced the horse-drawn carriage, we didn't upgrade the horses – we retired them. Perhaps it is time to do the same with Homo sapiens.

Internet-of-All-Things. Once this mission is accomplished, Homo sapiens will vanish.

With time, the 'wheat bargain' became more and more burdensome. Children died in droves, and adults ate bread by the sweat of their brows. The average person in Jericho of 8500 BC lived a harder life than the average person in Jericho of 9500 BC or 13,000 BC. But nobody realised what was happening. Every generation continued to live like the previous generation, making only small improvements here and there in the way things were done.

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud.

De la misma manera que la cultura medieval no consiguió casar la caballería con el cristianismo, el mundo moderno no logra casar la libertad con la igualdad.

Around 8500 BC the largest settlements in the world were villages such as Jericho, which contained a few hundred individuals.

Una revolución real exige, tarde o temprano, sacrificios que las empresas, sus empleados y sus accionistas no están dispuestos a hacer.

We cannot be sure of the specifics; change itself is the only certainty.

Así como cuando dos notas musicales discordantes que se tocan juntas obligan a una pieza musical a avanzar, la discordancia en nuestros pensamientos, ideas y valores nos fuerzan a pensar, reevaluar y criticar. La consistencia es el campo de juego de las mentes obtusas.

Yet it might be poised to create the most unequal of all societies.

medida que la IA continúe mejorando, los empleados humanos deberán aprender sin parar nuevas habilidades y cambiar de profesión.

During the last five centuries, humans increasingly came to believe that they could increase their capabilities by investing in scientific research. This wasn't just blind faith – it was repeatedly proven empirically.

in the long run no job will remain absolutely safe from automation.

Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.

Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. Very soon this traditional model will become utterly obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives, and to reinvent themselves repeatedly.