Creation and destruction Quote by Yuval Noah Harari
““In the early twenty-first century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station – and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo sapiens. Those who miss this train will never get a second chance. In order to get a seat on it you need to understand twenty-first-century technology, and in particular the powers of biotechnology and computer algorithms. These powers are far more potent than steam and the telegraph, and they will not be used merely for the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons. The main products of the twenty-first century will be bodies, brains and minds, and the gap between those who know how to engineer bodies and brains and those who do not will be far bigger than the gap between Dickens’s Britain and the Mahdi’s Sudan. Indeed, it will be bigger than the gap between Sapiens and Neanderthals. In the twenty-first century, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction.””
About This Quote
Source Book: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, 2015
The quote warns that technological mastery will create a stark divide between those who control biotech and AI and those who do not, potentially leading to societal extinction for the latter.
In simple terms: Tech will split humanity into creators and losers.
Learn and adapt to emerging tech now.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- career planning
- education
- policy making
- public discourse
- personal development
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- How will you acquire relevant tech skills?
- What policies can reduce the divide?
The warning assumes technology will be uniformly accessible and ethically guided, which may not hold true.