To combat the 'Artificial State,' Jill Lepore says to look to science fiction

The 21st century will bring changes and challenges unlike any humans have encountered before. Globalism and technological innovations are changing the structures of societies worldwide—and the changes are happening quickly. If people don’t face these challenges and help shape the future, the world could have a class of obsolete workers whose jobs have been automated and people could lose their ability to make their own decisions. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari highlights the biggest challenges in the modern world, and he offers advice on making sense of and navigating such transitional times.

In this summary, you'll learn how algorithms like Netflix movie recommendations are teaching you to distrust your own judgment, why religion can’t solve 21st-century challenges, and how automation will threaten the jobs of humans in every industry.

For millennia, humans struggled with three serious problems—famine, plagues, and war—which led to the deaths of millions of people and to the rise and fall of global empires. People coped with these problems and answered life's questions with religion. However, in the modern era, we no longer rely on prayer—we’ve mostly overcome these three problems through the development of technology and medical knowledge.

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, envisions a future in which technology replaces humanist ideals and liberal government. Dissecting the concepts of religion, immortality, and technology, Harari argues that the world of the future may be run by advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence, not human beings.

To understand the pressures on democracy in the 21st century, it’s important to understand what modern democracy is and where it came from. In The Origins of Political Order, political economist Francis Fukuyama explores the development of political systems from prehistory to the eve of the American and French revolutions in order to show how and why modern democracies evolved.

Fukuyama argues that a stable democratic society requires three components: a strong state, the rule of law, and accountability. In this guide, we’ll explore each of these components in detail and show, for example, how Chinese bureaucracy created the first modern state and how local English legal disputes eventually led to democracy. Along the way, we’ll build on, update, and sometimes challenge Fukuyama’s claims by referring to other works of political theory such as Sapiens, Humankind, and How Democracies Die.

Tech platforms and the U.S government have increased their surveillance and censorship of the Internet over the past decade, sharply so during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will the Internet ever be truly “free” again?

An endless flood of digital messages, images, and performances is reshaping how we think, relate to others, and function as a democratic society. In Superbloom, technology critic Nicholas Carr argues that we’ve entered “hyperreality,” where simulations have replaced our direct experience of the world, with serious consequences. He writes that every communication technology from the telegraph to social media has promised connection but delivered division—and we keep falling for it because we misunderstand human nature. This shift is fueling a mental health crisis, eroding our capacity for deep thought and empathy, and fragmenting democracy itself.

This guide breaks down Carr’s argument that the digital platforms we interact with everyday exploit our psychological vulnerabilities, that top-down changes to the system will likely fail, and that individual resistance may be our only path forward. We’ll also examine whether Carr’s pessimism is justified, explore the debate over social media’s role in mental health, and connect his call for resistance to a long American tradition of dissent.

Social media platforms face rising pressure to address new AI disinformation threats that could undermine the 2024 elections. Experts warn that companies’ failure to address sophisticated "deep fakes" threatens American democracy and could lead to violence.

The pandemic has forced Americans to rely more on technology—and tech executives are pushing for an even higher-tech future. But is this really the best future to pursue?

Silicon Valley’s brightest engineers optimize ads and build food delivery apps while America’s rivals race ahead in military AI—the technology that will determine 21st-century dominance. In The Technological Republic, Palantir executives Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska argue that the US tech industry is wasting its enormous talent on consumer products instead of on threats facing the nation. Drawing on their experience building defense technology, the authors contend that the US must reunite Silicon Valley with the Pentagon, revive its sense of national purpose, and launch a “new Manhattan Project” to lead AI development.

In this guide, we’ll unpack Karp and Zamiska’s argument: what they contend the US has lost, how cultural shifts have severed the tech-government partnership, and what they say must change. We’ll also examine competing visions of technology’s purpose, what Palantir’s work actually entails, whether the AI arms race is as inevitable as they claim, and what their vision reveals about Silicon Valley’s definition of public service.

What if artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t humanity’s greatest threat, but its greatest opportunity for empowerment? In Superagency, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and writer Greg Beato challenge the dominant anxieties around AI, arguing that it can dramatically amplify individual human capabilities while creating collective benefits for society.

Rather than replacing human agency, they contend that AI will help you access expertise, analyze complex problems, and achieve goals that were previously out of reach. They argue that the real risk isn’t AI becoming too powerful, but democratic societies withdrawing from AI development and ceding control to less benevolent actors.

In our guide, we’ll explore Hoffman and Beato’s insights through the lens of a few key questions: What does beneficial AI look like? Are restrictions on its development counterproductive? And how can we actively participate in shaping AI’s future? Along the way, we’ll explore how Hoffman and Beato’s optimistic predictions compare with emerging research on AI’s effects and whether their proposals for shaping AI’s future can work in practice.

Silicon Valley’s brightest engineers optimize ads and build food delivery apps while America’s rivals race ahead in military AI—the technology that will determine 21st-century dominance. In The Technological Republic, Palantir executives Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska argue that the US tech industry is wasting its enormous talent on consumer products instead of on threats facing the nation. Drawing on their experience building defense technology, the authors contend that the US must reunite Silicon Valley with the Pentagon, revive its sense of national purpose, and launch a “new Manhattan Project” to lead AI development.

In this guide, we’ll unpack Karp and Zamiska’s argument: what they contend the US has lost, how cultural shifts have severed the tech-government partnership, and what they say must change. We’ll also examine competing visions of technology’s purpose, what Palantir’s work actually entails, whether the AI arms race is as inevitable as they claim, and what their vision reveals about Silicon Valley’s definition of public service.

The 21st century will bring changes and challenges unlike any humans have encountered before. Globalism and technological innovations are changing the structures of societies worldwide—and the changes are happening quickly. If people don’t face these challenges and help shape the future, the world could have a class of obsolete workers whose jobs have been automated and people could lose their ability to make their own decisions. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari highlights the biggest challenges in the modern world, and he offers advice on making sense of and navigating such transitional times.

In this summary, you'll learn how algorithms like Netflix movie recommendations are teaching you to distrust your own judgment, why religion can’t solve 21st-century challenges, and how automation will threaten the jobs of humans in every industry.

An endless flood of digital messages, images, and performances is reshaping how we think, relate to others, and function as a democratic society. In Superbloom, technology critic Nicholas Carr argues that we’ve entered “hyperreality,” where simulations have replaced our direct experience of the world, with serious consequences. He writes that every communication technology from the telegraph to social media has promised connection but delivered division—and we keep falling for it because we misunderstand human nature. This shift is fueling a mental health crisis, eroding our capacity for deep thought and empathy, and fragmenting democracy itself.

This guide breaks down Carr’s argument that the digital platforms we interact with everyday exploit our psychological vulnerabilities, that top-down changes to the system will likely fail, and that individual resistance may be our only path forward. We’ll also examine whether Carr’s pessimism is justified, explore the debate over social media’s role in mental health, and connect his call for resistance to a long American tradition of dissent.