21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century highlights today’s most pressing political, cultural, and economic challenges created by technology while helping us prepare for an uncertain future.

Different ideologies have always shaped how humans see and steer the world. Whichever one grabs the most people tends to determine our history for decades. In the 20th century, fascism, communism, and liberalism fought for that privilege. Liberalism ended up being the clear winner.

Depending on which ideology dominates, different assets grow in value. Whatever’s most valuable is the thing politicians and nations will fight for, thus deciding what future the world progresses towards. So far, in the 21st century, technology seems to have all competitors beat. It’s the thing we most believe in.

With technology being our prime ideology, data becomes the most valuable asset. That’s why politicians struggle for their nations to win the giant tech race. The problem is that this time around, no one fully understands the implications of our ideology. Just look at the financial markets, where algorithms already do most of the work, with very few traders grasping what’s actually happening.

For politicians, this lack of understanding quickly becomes a threat. People are frustrated, feel ignored, and realize the representatives they elected don’t deal with the most important topics.

And yet, we know just as little about technology as they do.

I rarely talk about politics with my family, but when we do, we like to joke about the “genius” of certain policymakers. In Germany, it’s common for the minister of economics to suddenly become the minister of health. Highly specialized offices are swapped like Christmas presents, which makes no sense. How could someone be an expert in both medicine and military defense?

In reality, this problem befalls all of us, however. That’s why we talk so much about cognitive biases on Four Minute Books. To help us think a little better. One of them is what Harari calls ‘the knowledge illusion.’ Basically, we think we know a lot more than our ancestors when, actually, we know less in many regards.

For example, we all rely on many experts to live our everyday lives. We can’t hunt our own food, build our own shelter, or make our own clothes. We think we’re smart, but just because we can access all the world’s knowledge doesn’t mean it’s already in our head.

Instead, we should stay humble, be thankful, and do our best to never stop learning.

Neil deGrasse Tyson once gave a great speech on the value of knowing how to think vs. just knowing what to think. Sadly, our schools only teach us the latter. Even higher education still very much centers around cramming as many facts into…