Editor’s note:  This mind blowing work, subtitled “A Brief History of Tomorrow”, gets a bit lost for me because of its ambition to forecast a few hundred years forward.  Still there is so much to think about because of this brilliant author’s attempt to put some future form on emerging bio and data science.  Essentially he sees the combination of things like artificial intelligence, the “internet of everything” and DNA manipulations putting Homo Sapiens in a position to become Homo Deus (gods).  Man, having mostly overcome famine, plague and violence (good data on the truth of that is early in the book) has ever increasing bandwidth and so must inevitably come up with the “next big thing”.

Excerpt:  “People drink alcohol to forget, they smoke pot to feel peaceful, they take cocaine and meth to be sharp and confident, whereas Ecstasy provides ecstatic sensations and LSD sends you to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. What some people hope to get by studying, working or raising a family, others try to obtain far more easily through the right dosage of molecules.  This is an existential threat to the social and economic order, which is why countries wage a stubborn, bloody and hopeless war on biochemical crime.”