Tech can be used to enslave humans: Yuval Noah Harari

BENGALURU: Humans are passive consumers and technology can be used to control and enslave them, limiting their potential, Prof Yuval Noah Harari, internationally acclaimed Israeli author, said on Saturday.

In his virtual address on ‘Tech Evolution’ during the Ninth Synergia Conclave in the city, he said, “Tech inventions can be both helpful and unhelpful. So, how can authorities ensure that inventions are helpful?” “For humans to establish cities, kingdoms and empires, they have to remember numbers to file taxes.

With the invention of writing, which started with a little stick and some mud to imprint signs on a clay tablet, people found a way to record and file taxes that would be used to pay the salaries of a king’s staff. So, while writing empowered kings and royalty, it enslaved the ordinary mind and led to the rise of big kingdoms,” said the author of bestseller ‘Sapiens.’

Harari explored the dichotomy of tech inventions in the modern day by citing the invention of Apps like YouTube and TikTok. “YouTube was initially perceived with excitement because of its technical ability to share millions of videos, but it  would be useful only if there were millions of people uploading those millions of videos. This led to the ‘couch potato paradigm,” he said.

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