In 2015, Google engineer Anthony Levandowski started The Way of the Future, a church to worship super-intelligent AI. And now we have the Religion of the Future Police, began by former Google manager Malcolm Collins and his wife Simone.
Read MoreIt sounds like the stuff of comic books, but some very smart people have suggested homo sapiens would evolve telepathic powers. Now Silicon Valley technologists like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are betting billions on it.
Read MoreI’m writing a book on the history of the human potential movement and transhumanism, told through the lens of the Huxley family (Thomas, Aldous and Julian) and their friends. The book argues that the Huxleys were religious prophets, who imagined a future evolutionary religion of expanding human potential. I suggest this religion or worldview, which weaved through the late 19th and 20th centuries, is going to become yet more influential in the era of genomics.
Read MoreOur psyches are deeply connected to the material and symbolic worlds we weave around us. The habitat of our daily lives re-inforces our habits, for good and ill. All our stuff – our apartments, our clothes, our books, our TV, our online activity, our food, our relationships – helps make us who we are, in a powerful feedback loop.
Read MoreHow are you feeling? How well are you? Is your weight where you want it to be? Smoking too much? How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Are you optimising your personal brand? How fast was your last five kilometre run? Would you like to share that via social media? Would you like a life-coach to help you overcome these challenges on a way to a better, happier, more awesome you?
Read MoreWatch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We must resist. This, broadly, is the message of sociologist William Davies’ book, The Happiness Industry: How Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.
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