This blog post explores whether technological advancement will bring progress to humanity or lead to the extinction of Homo sapiens.
The final part of the book Sapiens discusses how Homo sapiens, modern humans, will ultimately face extinction. Most people who haven’t read this book would likely imagine catastrophic events like the meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs, an ice age, or a massive war like World War III as the cause of humanity’s extinction. However, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens explains humanity’s extinction in a different way. Why and how will humanity, the apex predator, face extinction? He argues it will be due to rapid technological advancement. Most people would scoff at the idea that technological progress could not only fail to advance humanity but actually cause its decline and extinction. Yet this book warns that technology will evolve humanity into a new form of existence, transforming us into lifeforms entirely different from modern humans, ultimately leading to the disappearance of the Homo sapiens species.
So what technological advancement will trigger this rapid evolution? It is the astonishing development of biotechnology. The content discussed here is not science fiction but pertains to the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution we are facing. Now, everyone can feel the Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us. The technologies advancing in this era are IT (Information Technology), BT (Biotechnology), and NT (Nanotechnology). A defining characteristic is that these fields do not develop independently but are organically interconnected. For example, IT, BT, and NT technologies combine to create micro-therapeutics that can freely navigate capillaries, or healthcare systems enabling health screenings without visiting a hospital. Beyond this, numerous next-generation convergence technologies are being developed: artificial organs without immune rejection, high-density bodies, brains with processing speeds like computers. What if humanity completes these technologies? People will seek to alter and enhance their own bodies. But could beings with such altered bodies truly remain Homo sapiens, or human?
This is precisely the end of humanity described in Sapiens. The book predicts humanity’s extinction through three main methods: first, biotechnology; second, cyborg engineering; and third, inorganic engineering. Collectively, these three can be termed biotechnology. As mentioned earlier, since it is the result of multiple disciplines converging, there is no need to strictly subdivide them.
First, biotechnology, simply put, involves altering our characteristics through genes to pursue a better life. For example, just as surgeons wear green scrubs to prevent eye strain from splattered blood during surgery, it’s the concept of someone who can’t swim well receiving an injection of the fin-generating gene to become a strong swimmer. In other words, it involves manipulating genes to enable feats impossible for humans. It’s similar to the feeling in the movie Captain America: The First Avenger, where the protagonist receives an injection and transforms into Captain America. Can such altered individuals truly be considered human?
Second, cyborg engineering involves mechanizing the body. While similar to biotechnology, it specifically means replacing bodily parts with machines to achieve various enhancements. For example, replacing limbs with mechanical ones could allow someone to jump from 300 meters without injury or easily lift objects weighing several tons. It can also provide new bodies for those who have lost limbs in accidents. Can such cyborgs—humans with mechanical bodies—truly be called human?
Finally, there is non-organic engineering. This concept is the simplest: it involves transferring the human mind into a computer. That is, the mind leaves the organic human body and is transferred to an inorganic entity like a computer or computational device. While this could be seen as a complete negation of human consciousness, it also raises the possibility of precisely replicating a person’s brain and placing it in a computer to enable conversation. In such a case, would the entity I’m conversing with be a person or a computer? How would one answer such a question?
Sapiens warns that these technological advances will ultimately transform humans into non-human beings. The book then begins to explore dystopian prospects. Ironically, however, his subsequent work, Homo Deus, discusses the possibility of humans transforming into divine beings, akin to Zeus, the supreme god of Greek mythology. These books present various possibilities rather than definitively determining our future. Among those countless possibilities, which future will we choose? This is an issue we must continue to watch closely.
