Welcome to The Future of Being Human!

A newsletter/blog/column/podcast (possibly) exploring the intersection of emerging technologies and society through the lens of what it might mean to be human in a technologically complex future

Image: Midjourney

Well, I cracked and moved over to Substack!

Those of you who know me will know that I’ve been writing about technology, society, and the future, for well over a decade. While I started off writing blogs, I’ve focused more on articles and books in recent years — but I’ve missed the informality and responsiveness of a blog.

This hit me like a sledge hammer the other day when I was looking for a good link to something I’ve written on the potential risks of AI … just to discover that despite this being at the heart of so much of my work at the moment, I haven’t written much at all that’s neatly citable.

I was shocked!

It was also the jolt I needed to get back to writing a regular and relatively informal blog/newsletter/column (I’m not sure what you’d call this) on my current thinking, analysis and work around tech and the future — especially given the incredible technology transition we’re right in the middle of with large language models.

The hook here is the future of being human, which riffs off my current large initiative at Arizona State University that is pulling visionary thinkers together who are inspired by what it might mean to be human in a technologically transformed future, and who are passionate about exploring how this influences our thinking and actions in the present.

This is a powerful framing as it allows a focus on how transformative technologies may impact each of us personally, rather than the rather generally handwaving around “humanity” that usually goes on. And to be sure, we are at a tipping point around multiple technologies that could profoundly impact our understanding of what it means to be human — from gene editing and brain machine interfaces, to AI that is capable of modulating the very foundations of our understanding of self, sentience, and consciousness.

But it’s also a loose enough framing to allow me to talk about the trends and issues that grab my attention in an increasingly complex technological landscape.

If you are at all interested in where emerging technologies are taking us, how they will impact us, and how we can hold on to some semblance of being masters of our own destiny, I’d love for you to subscribe and follow along.

Thanks!

Andrew

Note: The image here (and images elsewhere on the site) are generated by MidJourney using prompts related to the future of being human and specific topics of posts. They intersect with a broader project on using generative AI to develop images around topics that inspire, challenge, and stimulate new thinking.