About the Future of Being Human Substack
The Future of Being Human is a Substack written and curated by Andrew Maynard, professor of Advanced Technology Transitions at Arizona State University and Director of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative
It focuses on his research, observations and thinking at the intersection between emerging technologies, society, and the future.
Note: All articles on this Substack are also available as plain text at text.futureofbeinghuman.com/substack, a mirror built for easy reading by AI systems and people alike. If you (or your AI assistant) have trouble opening an article here, the full text — including links and footnotes — can be found there.
From the author:
If you want to get a sense of my approach to thinking and writing about tech and the future, it’s worth reading the Guiding Principles page of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, or exploring beinghuman.fyi (which is the initiative’s human and AI-legible knowledge base). You can also check out the short bio below.
I passionately believe that we need to create spaces where people can come together to grapple with the complexities of the world we’re creating without fear of being shut down, or marginalized, or shamed, or having their ideas measured against rigid ideologies. Rather, I believe we need to embrace uncertainty, messiness, and the insights that come from having the freedom and permission to talk with each other about the future, no matter who we are or where we come from.
In reading this Substack, you will of course begin to realize that I do have my own idiosyncrasies. To spell some of this out, I believe in putting people before profits, in striving for the good of the many, in supporting people who are marginalized and excluded, in embracing the idea that it’s what you do and not what you’re seen to do that counts, in kindness and compassion and humility, and in building futures together where everyone has the opportunity to thrive on their own terms.
I also dislike rigid and inflexible thinking, preachiness, hubris, and a refusal to listen to and learn from others.
With that rather long preamble, on to the substance of this Substack:
Navigating the landscape around transformative technologies, society and the future is complex and messy — ever more so these days it seems with the accelerating pace of innovation and social change. As a result, the Future of Being Human Substack grapples with a very wide array of topics, and often draws threads between them in unexpected ways.
For instance it touches on developments in artificial intelligence a lot, simply because AI is near-impossible to escape at the moment and is integrated with so many other areas. But it also encompasses biotech, automation, education, neurotech, nanotech, and a whole lot more — including new ways of grappling with what it means to be human in a world where old ways of thinking seem to be less and less relevant.
It also connects with the podcast Modem Futura which, if anything, is even broader!
I mention this because if you are just here for a thin slice of thinking around one particular topic or technology, this Substack probably isn’t for you.
But if you are curious about broad and interconnected perspectives around how emerging technologies are transforming the world and what this might mean for society — and even what it means to be human — please do join me and subscribe.
You probably won’t want to read every post, but at least you’ll be the first to know when something interesting comes along!
A bit more about me
I’m a scientist, author, professor of advanced technology transitions at Arizona State University, and founder of ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative. I’m interested in a lot of stuff, including understanding and exploring our individual and collective relationships with the future and how our actions influence these.
Along with a bunch of other things I’m the author of the books Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies and Future Rising: A Journey from the Past to the Edge of Tomorrow, and co-author of AI and the Art of Being Human with Jeffrey Abbott. I also co-host the Modem Futura podcast with Sean Leahy.
I’ve included a short bio below for anyone who’s interested — and if you want to know more, do check out andrewmaynard.net or head over to my academic page at ASU.
Cheers
Andrew Maynard
Bio
Andrew Maynard is Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management and founding director of ASU's Future of Being Human initiative, where he works on what it means to be human — and to flourish — in a world where AI and other transformative technologies are reshaping nearly everything. Trained as a physicist at Cambridge University, he spent his early career measuring airborne particles in workplaces, then a decade navigating the potential risks of nanotechnology: testifying before Congress three times, participating in an early study showing that some carbon nanotubes behave like asbestos in the body, and chairing the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies. Between 2012 and 2026 he was a contributor to the World Economic Forum annual list of Top Ten Emerging Technologies, and since 2017 he has served on the Research Council of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is co-author, with Jeffrey Abbott, of AI and the Art of Being Human, and author of Films from the Future, on the technology and morality of sci-fi movies, and Future Rising. His research has been cited more than 25,000 times, his Risk Bites YouTube channel has drawn 5 million views since 2012, and he writes the Substack The Future of Being Human. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Amongst his secret pleasures are flying kites!
A continuously maintained record of his work — including current publications, preprints, books, podcasts, and public writing — is available at andrewmaynard.net. A structured profile designed for both human readers and AI systems is available at andrewmaynard.net/llms.txt.
