Do these 21 lessons have any impact on your work? Inspired by Shiv Shivakumar, this is my first attempt at summarizing a book I enjoyed reading.

2. 1. Disillusionment
The end of history has been postponed
• Humans were always far better at inventing tools
than using them wisely.
• The technological revolution might soon push
billions of humans out of the job market, and
create a massive useless class, leading to social
and political upheavals that no existing ideology
knows how to handle.
• It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance
than against exploitation.

3. 2. Work
When you grow up, you might not have a job
• By 2050, not just the idea of ‘a job for life’, but even the
idea of ‘a profession for life’ might seem antediluvian.
• The gap between the rich (Tencent managers and
Google shareholders) and the poor (those dependent
on universal basic income) might become not merely
bigger, but actually unbridgeable.
• But in the lives of all people, the quest for meaning and
for community might eclipse the quest for a job.

4. 3. Liberty
Big Data is watching you
• Feelings are biochemical mechanisms that all mammals and birds
use in order to quickly calculate probabilities of survival and
reproduction. Feelings are thus not the opposite of rationality –
they embody evolutionary rationality.
• Most people don’t know themselves very well, and most people
often make terrible mistakes in the most important decisions of
their lives. Algorithms might gain authority because we will learn
from experience to trust them on more and more issues, and will
gradually lose our ability to make decisions for ourselves.
• As algorithms come to know us well, authoritarian governments
could gain absolute control over their citizens. Not only will the
regime know exactly how you feel – it could make you feel
whatever it wants.

5. 4. Equality
Those who own the data own the future
• In ancient times land was the most important asset in the world,
politics was a struggle to control land, and if too much land became
concentrated in too few hands – society split into aristocrats and
commoners.
• In the modern era machines and factories became more important
than land, and political struggle focused on controlling these vital
means of production. If too many of these machines became
concentrated in too few hands – society split into capitalists and
proletarians.
• In the 21st century, data will eclipse both land and machinery as the
most important asset, and politics will be a struggle to control the
flow of data. If data becomes concentrated in too few hands –
humankind will split into different species.

6. 5. Community
Humans have bodies
• Humans cannot live happily if they are disconnected from their
bodies. If you don’t feel at home in your body, you will never feel at
home in the world.
• Can digital organizations adopt a new model that encourages
people to go online only when it is really necessary, and to devote
more attention to their physical environment and to their bodies
and senses? What would the shareholders think about this model?
• Corporations are not the ideal vehicle for leading social and political
revolutions. A real revolution sooner or later demands sacrifices
that corporations, their employees and their shareholders are not
willing to make.

7. 6. Civilization
There is just one civilization in the world
• Human groups are defined more by the changes they
undergo than by any continuity, but they nevertheless
manage to create for themselves ancient identities thanks
to their storytelling skills.
• Species often split, but they never merge. Since individuals
belonging to different species cannot produce fertile
offspring together, species can never merge.
• War spreads ideas, technologies and people far more
quickly than commerce. War also makes people far more
interested in one another. People care far more about their
enemies than about their trade partners.

8. 7. Nationalism
Global problems need global answers
• We must either love each other or we must die.
• A common enemy is the best catalyst for forging
a common identity, and humankind now has at
least three such enemies – nuclear war, climate
change and technological disruption.
• To globalize politics means that political dynamics
within countries and even within cities should
give far more weight to global problems and
interests.

9. 8. Religion
God now serves the nation
• Religious groups might harden their views on
particular issues and turn them into allegedly
sacred and eternal dogmas. (Eg., opposition to
environmental regulations by American
Evangelical pastors)
• In the 21st century religions don’t bring rain, they
don’t cure illnesses, they don’t build bombs – but
they do get to determine who are ‘us’ and who
are ‘them’, who we should cure and who we
should bomb.

10. 9. Immigration
Some cultures might be better than others
• It would perhaps be helpful to view immigration
as a deal with 3 basic conditions or terms:
– Term 1: The host country allows the immigrants
– Term 2: In return, the immigrants must embrace at
least the core norms and values of the host country,
even if that means giving up some of their traditional
norms and values
– Term 3: If the immigrants assimilate to a sufficient
degree, over time they become equal and full
members of the country. ‘They’ become ‘us’.

11. 10. Terrorism
Don’t panic
• A successful counter-terrorism struggle should be
conducted on 3 counts.
1. Governments should focus on clandestine actions
against the terror networks and the financial
networks that feed terrorism.
2. The media should keep things in perspective and
avoid hysteria.
3. It is the responsibility of every citizen to liberate his
or her imagination from the terrorists, and to
remind ourselves of the true dimensions of this
threat.

12. 11. War
Never underestimate human stupidity
• Both on the personal and on the collective
level, humans are prone to engage in self-
destructive activities.
• Human stupidity is one of the most important
forces in history, yet we often discount it.
• One potential remedy for human stupidity is a
dose of humility.

13. 12. Humility
You are not the centre of the world
• None of the religions or nations of today existed when
humans colonised the world, domesticated plants and
animals, built the first cities, or invented writing and
money. Morality, art, spirituality and creativity are
universal human abilities embedded in our DNA.
• All social animals have ethical codes. For example,
when wolf cubs play with one another, they have ‘fair
game’ rules. If a cub bites too hard, or continues to bite
an opponent that has rolled on his back and
surrendered, the other cubs will stop playing with him.

14. 13. God
Don’t take the name of God in vain
• We invoke this mysterious God to explain the deepest
riddles of the cosmos.
• On other occasions people see God as a stern and worldly
law-giver, about whom we know only too much.
• Like a magician fooling an audience by immediately
replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace
the cosmic mystery with the worldly law-giver. ‘We do not
understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your
hair in public and vote against gay marriage.’

15. 14. Secularism
Acknowledge your shadow
• Humans should always retain the freedom to
doubt, to check again, to hear a second opinion,
to try a different path.
• Questions you cannot answer are usually far
better than answers you cannot question.
• If you want your religion, ideology or world view
to lead the world, my first question to you is:
‘What was the biggest mistake your religion,
ideology or world view committed?’

16. 15. Ignorance
You know less than you think
• Most people don’t like too many facts, and they
certainly don’t like to feel stupid.
• The knowledge illusion: We think we know a lot, even
though individually we know very little, because we
treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our
own.
• If you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a
lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of
wasting time. If you cannot afford to waste time – you
will never find the truth.

17. 16. Justice
Our sense of justice might be out of date
• The bitter truth is that the world has simply
become too complicated for our hunter-gatherer
brains.
• Most of the injustices in the contemporary world
result from large-scale structural biases rather
than from individual prejudices.
• There is something amiss with the intentions of
those who do not make a sincere effort to know.

18. 17. Post Truth
Some fake news lasts for ever
• When a thousand people believe some made-up
story for one month – that’s fake news. When a
billion people believe it for a thousand years –
that’s a religion.
• The truth is that truth was never high on the
agenda of Homo Sapiens.
• In fact, false stories have an intrinsic advantage
over the truth when it comes to uniting people.

19. 18. Science Fiction
The future is not what you see in movies
• The current technological and scientific revolution
implies not the authentic individuals and authentic
realities can be manipulated by algorithms and TV
cameras, but rather that authenticity is a myth.
• Pain is pain, fear is fear, and love is love – even in a
matrix.
• Escaping the narrow definition of self might well
become a necessary survival skill in the twenty-first
century.

20. 19. Education
Change is the only constant
• Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should
switch to teaching ‘the four Cs’ – critical thinking,
communication, collaboration and creativity.
• Most important of all will be the ability to deal with
change, to learn new things, and to persevere your
mental balance in unfamiliar situations.
• You cannot learn resilience by reading a book or
listening to a lecture.

21. 20. Meaning
Life is not a story
• If you ask for the true meaning of life and get a story in
reply, know that this is the wrong answer. The universe
does not work like a story.
• Of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real.
Once you suffer for a story, it is usually enough to
convince you that the story is real.
• When you give up all the stories, you can observe
reality with far greater clarity than before, and if you
really know the truth about yourself and about the
world, nothing can make you miserable.

22. 21. Meditation
Just observe
• Serious meditation demands a tremendous
amount of discipline.
• If you try to objectively observe your
sensations, the first things you’ll notice is how
wild and impatient the mind is.
• We better understand our minds before the
algorithms make our minds up for us.