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Audiobooks Narrated by James Garnon
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An eye-opening journey into a world of tech visionaries, billionaires, and eccentrics dedicated to nothing less than the salvation of mankind
Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our biology—of our senses, intelligence, and lifespans. It has been quietly exerting its influence on technology for decades, but in the last few years it has achieved critical mass, finding support among some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and beyond.
In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering (and terrifying) possibilities that present themselves when you of think of your body as an outmoded 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, enhancing their senses by implanting electronics under their skin. He meets with members of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a team urgently investigating how to protect mankind from falling victim to artificial superintelligence.
Through this journey, O'Connell presents a singular, entertaining look at a growing movement, and an exploration of the ancient yearning to transcend our animal condition—a desire as primal as the oldest religions, as elemental as the ancient myths. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015
Meet U. - a talented and uneasy figure currently pimping his skills to an elite consultancy in contemporary London. His employers advise everyone from big businesses to governments, and, to this end, expect their 'corporate anthropologist' to help decode and manipulate the world around them - all the more so now that a giant, epoch-defining project is in the offing.
Instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions, zombie parades. Is there, U. wonders, a secret logic holding all these images together - a codex that, once cracked, will unlock the master-meaning of our age? Might it have something to do with South Pacific Cargo Cults, or the dead parachutists in the news? Perhaps; perhaps not.
As U. oscillates between the visionary and the vague, brilliance and bullshit, Satin Island emerges, an impassioned and exquisite novel for our disjointed times.
