There’s been a plethora of (really good) books about what the future of AI. In God-like, launching on 15th March, I take a deep look into the past instead. It seems to me that we need to understand where in the human heart this thing has come from if we’re to have a hope of getting what’s next right.
A good part of that past gets under the hood of Oppenheimer, and his links to the Scottish poet, John Donne (guesses anyone?!). But, with AI inextricably linked to our social atomisation in the nuclear age, I do believe that we can get the future right.
The means to that – I argue – is about finding ways to counter the ‘bowling alone’ trajectory that Robert Putnam so powerfully argues in his book published back in 2000.
If you’ve not read it, I recommend it highly. It has the advantage of being written just before the internet age, so is nicely unencumbered by the black hole of social media, talking of ‘television’ culture instead.
The counterculture gave us turn on, tune in, drop out… what we’ll need in this new ‘encounterculture’ is to turn off, tune out… and drop in.
The forms that that takes… you’ll have to wait to find out 😉
Pre-order the book here.
