Synopses & Reviews
"This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters." — New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies — our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans — in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses.
In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O’Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world’s foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence.
Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O’Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.
Review
"Open-minded…With a practiced journalist’s sense of engagement and empathy leavened by healthy skepticism, O’Connell describes the peculiar constellation of scientists, seekers, grifters, and con artists orbiting techno-optimist communities over the past half century….Offer[s] much-needed critical analysis that never veers into condescension." LA Review of Books
Review
"O’Connell…dissects the practices and beliefs of trans-humanism with extraordinary exuberance and wit…To Be a Machine is sometimes hilarious (triggering several bursts of uncontrollable giggles while I read it on the Tube) but even as O’Connell mocks the more absurd manifestations of trans-humanism he shows sympathy and understanding for its adherents." Financial Times
Review
"Wryly humorous, cogently insightful….To Be a Machine is a lucid, soulful pilgrimage into the heart of what humanity means to us now — and how science may redefine it tomorrow, for better and for worse." NPR.org
Review
"Troubling and humorous, this is one of my current give-it-to-everyone books — I buy six copies at a time. Did you know our future belongs to a few asocial geeks for whom being human has always been a problem? Now they can solve it!" Jeanette Winterson, Vulture
About the Author
MARK O’CONNELL is Slate’s books columnist, a staff writer at The Millions, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker’s "Page-Turner" blog; his work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Observer, and The Independent.