To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
Written by Mark O'Connell
Narrated by James Garnon
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies-our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans-in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world's biggest businesses.
In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence.
Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.
Mark O'Connell
Dr. Mark O'Connell received his doctorate in psychology from Boston University and his post-doctoral training in psychoanalysis from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Alison, and their three children: Miles, Chloe, and Dylan. He has a psychotherapy practice of adults, adolescents, and couples, and serves on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and the Harvard Medical School. He writes and speaks about fatherhood, family life, and masculinity.
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Reviews for To Be a Machine
27 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary: Believe it or not, transhumanism (the alteration of humans using technology in order to improve upon the human in some way), is becoming more and more mainstream. In this well-researched book, journalist Mark O’Connell records his journeys through transhumanism conferences, meetings with rich, well-connected transhumanist individuals, and a crazy bus-ride with a person who was “running for president” and wanted to make people live forever.My thoughts: Like the author, I am skeptical that transhumanism is really a great development for mankind. It feels a little – well – wrong to change one’s body to “improve upon it.” And I don’t want to live forever. However, I think the book was very interesting and expressed some interesting arguments in favor of transhumanism. Despite the author’s skepticism, he portrayed transhumanists in a positive light, and remained impartial. The book was well-researched, and I certainly feel more educated on the subject now. I would suggest this book to people who are interested in technology waves of the future with a dash of philosophy.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mark O'Connell provides the reader with a snapshot of some of the extensive technology and ideas that are part of the transhumanism movement. O'Connell interviews those who are determined to upload the human mind, others who explore the biological options for overcoming or stalling death, advocates and opponents of artificial intelligence, DIY cyborg enthusiasts, and participants at transhumanist gatherings.O'Connell also spends time reflecting on aspects of transhumanist solutions, should they come to fruition. Often this is simply questioning the adoption of the solution just because it's available. The book is pitched a the layperson so if you were looking for something more technically-orientated then best keep looking. O'Connell's book is not an instruction manual for a DIY Borg.While my knowledge of Transhumanism wasn't radically expanded, it was the diverse and fascinating cast the author interviews that held my interest. O'Connell occasionally pokes fun at some of them. However, discovering what drives these people to seek a solution to the 'modest problem of death', their ideas, philosophies, and methods employed to solve problems were worth the read.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Pearl Ruled after 70 pages. This work of "gonzo journalism" about transhumanism (the new eugenics) may be of interest to Silicon Valley geeks, sci-fi fans, and others who naïvely believe that humans can be cryopreserved and achieve immortality. As a Christian I find this movement to be morally repugnant, and the money spent trying to play God would be better used to support research to cure Alzheimer's dementia, cancer, and other chronic illnesses. This book was a curious and disappointing choice for this year's otherwise outstanding Wellcome Book Prize longlist, which concerns medicine and health rather than pseudoscience and fantasy, and in the 10 years that I've followed this prize this is easily the worst and least appropriate of the 50+ longlisted or shortlisted books I've read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A brief guide following an excellent narrator through his interactions with near future up loaders, cyborgs, implant specialists, artificial intelligence and singularity proposers and observers. Near apocalyptic prophysisiing to musings on humanity itself coupled with laugh out loud humour make this an interesting and varied read. Amusing, at times insightful, in others, just insane but worth reading and ruminating on. A good introduction to the subject too.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I['m glad this was a relatively short book because I found myself rereading sentences to try and really absorb their meaning rather than just skimming. O'Connell gives us an overview of the different means that may be possible soon, to prolong our life by different technological means. Transhumanism is defined as "a movement predicated on the conviction that we can and should use technology to control the future evolution of our species"(2). The first way offered is by cryonics whereby a person prepays to have his head ($80,000) or entire body ($200,000) frozen in liquid nitrogen until suce time that it can be thawed and returned to life by advanced scientific means. We also met people called grinders who implant devices of dubious effect (usually to themselves since they couldn't find a licensed surgeon to agree to the procedure) in their own bodies. We also met people working on the considerable problem of downloading the brain to an artificial device or programming one to simulate the activity of the human brain.I think I tried to read this book because it arrived in my library just when I was playing a game with AIs and bionic augmentation so it seemed to be appropriate. The one problem I had with this book was that the author was always present and the reader was all too aware of his scepticism and sarcasm. Otherwise it was a very readable, though demanding (for this reader), book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nowadays technology is pervasive; you are rarely more than a few feet away from a smartphone or some sort of internet-enabled device. But there are some people out there who want to take it further, much, much further. Not only do they want to embrace technology, but quite a few of them want to actually inhale it; to change their bodies, improve their minds, maybe even become immortal. These people are looking beyond humanity; these people want to be transhuman.
O'Connell poses the question; what is next for humanity? To answer this question will take him all around the world to meet the weird, the wonderful and the slightly disturbed people who are trying to answer it. He visits the DARPA Robotics Challenge to meet engineers who are building the next generation of robots that are capable of learning and have awareness of their surroundings, a frightening thought when you consider the implications. He visits a cryogenics company who will remove and store your head with the promise that it will be available should the technology reach the point where it can resuscitate you, something that no one can predict if this will ever happen at this current moment. Teenagers seem perfectly happy to be constantly holding a phone, but there are those that want the technology to be always available and who are hacking their own bodies to install home-made electronics within themselves. Some are seeking immortality and are looking for ways to postpone death indefinitely and there are those that see that immortality should be capturing the mind and uploading it as you would do with photos.
These concepts that O’Connell explores on his journey through transhumanism are starting to move from the pages of science fiction into the mainstream. We already have athletes that compete in the Paralympics that are capable of equalling regular competitors and as our trust grows in technology we are looking at ways of enhancing our humanity. We, as a species, have many limitations, but the one we do not lack is imagination. Turning those ideas that the people in this book have into practical solutions is another level up on where we are at the moment, but humanity is nothing but ingenious. As an electronics and mechanical engineer this book both fascinates and terrifies me at the same time (am I the only one who had the name Skynet pass through my mind). There is the potential of the enhancements that can change people’s lives for the good, but there are lots of very real problems that need to be addressed. No one can categorically say if these things will work, or if they will benefit us, or what the implications are of submitting our lives to the responsibility of robots helpers will be. An interesting book that hopefully will provoke further discussion as we embrace technology and it envelops us. 3.5 Stars.