This is another in the genre of books about the accelerating global climate crisis, written by the noted environmental and climate change writer and activist Bill McGibben. However, in addition to considering the existential peril of climate change, McGibben also looks at a couple of other looming threats to human survival and identity: genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.
In the course of a very thoughtful and philosophical analysis, he suggests that we need to look critically at these technological marvels we are being offered, and think about what their adoption will do to the human story, and what it means to be a human on this planet.
He asks, do we want to live in a totally human-managed environment, given how little we really know about how nature works, and how badly many of our attempts to manage the environment have turned out? Do we want every person (or at least every child of the most wealthy among us) to be an engineered product, who will inevitably be followed by newer and "better" versions? What about the ethics and good sense of trying to create artificial "intelligence" to replace our own human minds and activities -- is this either desirable, or moral?
These are all very urgent questions, well considered. It’s an interesting and in some respects more hopeful treatise than we might expect, given the dire nature of our current technological times and problems. Recommended.
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