If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- How could a superintelligent AI tasked with something as mundane as manufacturing paper clips accidentally bring about the end of human existence?
- What is 'longevity escape velocity,' and how do biomedical scientists believe it could eventually allow humans to outpace aging and live indefinitely?
- Why are underground 'biohackers' implanting biometric sensors directly into their bodies, and what does this reveal about the transhumanist desire to upgrade human hardware?
Listen to To Be A Machine — Free Audiobook
Key Takeaways from To Be A Machine
- Transhumanists view aging, illness, and death not as unavoidable natural processes, but as solvable engineering problems and curable diseases.
- Organizations are already practicing cryonic suspension by freezing human heads, reflecting a near-religious faith that future technology will allow for reanimation or mind-uploading.
- Biomedical scientists are pursuing 'longevity escape velocity,' a theoretical tipping point where medical treatments increase human life expectancy faster than the rate at which we age.
- The impending 'intelligence explosion' of artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, as hyper-efficient machines could inadvertently destroy us while single-mindedly completing simple instructions.
- Dedicated biohackers are already initiating the transition to cyborgism by implanting computer hardware directly into their bodies to optimize our fragile, suboptimal biology.
To Be A Machine — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Transhumanism offers fresh answers to humanity’s oldest questions.
Chapter 3: Companies are cashing in on transhumanist dreams of resurrection, but the science falls short.
Chapter 4: Bold life extension therapies are already under development.
Chapter 5: The Technological Singularity is on its way, whether we embrace it or not.
Chapter 6: Superintelligent machines could become a serious danger to humanity’s survival.
Chapter 7: Robots remain clumsy at everyday tasks – and that may actually work in our favor.
Chapter 8: Cyborg technology is moving beyond the experimental, driven by committed biohackers.
To Be A Machine Summary & Overview
To Be a Machine (2017) charts the strange, emerging world of transhumanism, taking an honest look at the men and women working on undreamed-of new technologies. In this book, Mark O'Connell describes the people who are attempting to evade death, create hyper-intelligent machines, and even hack their own bodies.
Who Should Listen to To Be A Machine?
- Science buffs interested in the next big thing
- Futurists anxious about the fate of humankind
- Fans of science fiction looking to realize their dreams
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