In 2021, Yuri Milner, the Giving Pledge signatory behind projects like the Breakthrough Initiatives and the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, published his short book Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilisation. The book frames humanity as a civilisation in need of a unified mission, and it discusses our role in the “Universal Story.”
These are three things you can learn by reading Yuri Milner’s Eureka Manifesto.
1. You Are the Universe Waking Up
As Carl Sagan once said, “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Eureka Manifesto explains that human life represents a cosmic awakening: We are the Universe opening its eyes and starting to understand itself after a fourteen-billion-year sleep.
Our evolution as sentient beings — capable of thinking, sharing knowledge, and exploring the world around us with our senses and technologies — goes back much further than the first emergence of primitive cells on Earth.
Our story began when the previously lifeless Universe gave birth to structure. As this structure grew more complex, the cosmos eventually formed minds out of matter — our minds.
This “Universal Story” is the narrative of everything we know, starting with the Big Bang and continuing right up until today.
2. Humanity’s Shared Mission
Every successful organisation, including our entire civilisation, needs a mission. In Eureka Manifesto, Yuri Milner suggests humanity’s shared mission could be “to explore and understand our Universe.”
Everyone can take part in — and has a stake in — this mission, not just the great scientists whose discoveries progress our knowledge of the Universe.
If we don’t embrace the mission, we risk a deceleration or a complete reversal of scientific progress. We could end up squandering our potential as a species with the power to think critically, collaborate, and push the boundaries of exploration.
3. How To Advance the Mission
In Eureka Manifesto, Yuri Milner outlines his five-step plan for advancing humanity’s mission. This plan includes investing in fundamental science and space exploration, celebrating scientists as cultural icons, and collectively bringing about a new age of enlightenment.
We can all contribute to the creation of a society that has the right conditions to encourage further exploration of the Universe. Yuri Milner emphasises that now is the time to act, as artificial intelligence and machine learning may soon radically accelerate the pace of scientific progress.
Learn more about Yuri Milner’s short book Eureka Manifesto.
About Yuri Milner
Yuri Milner is the founder of DST Global, one of the world’s top internet technology investment firms. He is also a Giving Pledge signatory, along with his wife Julia. The couple signed the Giving Pledge in 2012 as a public declaration of their ongoing sponsorship of scientific causes.
That same year, the couple partnered with Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin, and other billionaires to establish the Breakthrough Prize, which celebrates leading scientists and researchers.
In 2015, the Milners launched the Breakthrough Junior Challenge to help spread scientific ideas amongst younger generations. The Breakthrough Junior Challenge encourages teenagers around the world to submit short videos explaining a difficult scientific concept in a creative and illuminating manner. Breakthrough Junior Challenge winners receive prizes worth thousands of dollars.
Further realising his Giving Pledge promise, Yuri Milner has invested in several advanced scientific programmes called the Breakthrough Initiatives. The Breakthrough Initiatives include Listen, Watch, Starshot, Discuss, and Message, and boast notable co-founders like Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Hawking.
Through the Breakthrough Initiatives, Yuri Milner is helping humanity answer some of life’s most fundamental questions, such as: Are we alone in the Universe? Are there planets close to Earth that could host primitive alien life? And might humans one day travel to the stars?
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