The first book I read on anthropology was Guns, Germs & Steel, way back in 2005. While I enjoyed the insights and talked about it for a long time, it was not yet time for me to develop my reading habit. So, it took half a dozen years before I started on the next anthropology book – Collapse, incidentally by the same author Jared Diamond. By this time I was quite deep into reading non-fiction and a steady stream of great books enriched my knowledge across history and anthropology. Special mention among them would go to The Naked Ape and Origin of Species for being focused on anthropology.
By the end of 2017, I became a believer of science and encountered two enlightening books by Yuval Noah Harari that took my understanding to the next level. Sapiens gave concrete shape to the vague idea I had around how humans came to rule the world. And its sequel Home Deus painted a plausible picture of what future holds for us! It was sheer awesomeness to realize that the beginning of history was only 70,000 years ago with cognitive revolution. And how lucky we are to have gotten the accidental genetic mutations that changed inner wiring of our brains! It is difficult to comprehend that before cognitive revolution, history was just biology, with human life following predetermined pattern like any other animal – dictated by instructions encoded in their DNA!
One should read the book to appreciate the profoundness. The insights at the end of the book are compelling, comparing conventional thinking with contemporary science.
| Conventional Thinking | Data Science |
| I am an individual | Organisms (including us) are algorithms |
| My authentic self is completely free | My decisions are shaped by genes and environmental pressures |
| I know things about myself that no one else can discover | An external algorithm can theoretically know me better than I know myself |
Now that I am wiser, what next? Time to embrace the prophecy and prepare for the future! I started learning TensorFlow and instantly understood that the future of programming is in machine learning. As I started appreciating science, I also realized that Mathematics enables science. Math skills are becoming increasingly key to success in computer science and programming. And Math skills are fundamental to machine learning! Lot more to learn and that keeps life interesting!!!