As we boarded the black gull-wing Tesla Mr. Harari had rented for his visit, he brought up Aldous Huxley. Generations have been horrified by his novel “Brave New World”, which depicts a regime of emotion control and painless consumption. Readers who encounter the book today, Mr. Harari said, often think it sounds great. Everything is so nice, and in that way it is an intellectually disturbing book because you’re really hard-pressed to explain what’s wrong with it
, he said. And you do get today a vision coming out of some people in Silicon Valley which goes in that direction.
He said he had resigned himself to tech executives’ global reign, pointing out how much worse the politicians are. I’ve met a number of these high-tech giants, and generally they’re good people
, he said. They’re not Attila the Hun. In the lottery of human leaders, you could get far worse.
Some of his tech fans, he thinks, come to him out of anxiety. Some may be very frightened of the impact of what they are doing
, Mr. Harari said.
Still, their enthusiastic embrace of his work makes him uncomfortable. It’s just a rule of thumb in history that if you are so much coddled by the elites it must mean that you don’t want to frighten them
, Mr. Harari said. They can absorb you. You can become the intellectual entertainment.
Nellie BowlesI have never quite understood the admiration and reverence some people have developed for Yuval Noah Harari. It seems to me that he is just taking existing ideas and repackages them in a more digestible form for the masses – basically a historian version of Paulo Coelho. This might partially explain the benevolence of the tech elite: he is simply introducing some of big tech’s long-term plans to the public and CEOs like that he is building acceptance in advance for these ideas. Or they are so confident of their grip on power that his criticism poses no threat to them, a distraction so minor that it has become entertaining.
One thing is certain: tech executives may be ‘good people’, but they can nevertheless cause a lot of damage to society. If as a historian Mr. Harari has not recognized that, I seriously question his grasp on the subject.
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