Hip hip hurray. For those of you that don't know my annual emotional cycle, I am completely unfriendly from say mid February to 4/15 every year as I procrastinate over taxes. I was not always like this. Decades ago I actually got refunds, even after we were married., Alas for years and years, we are either supporting a dependent family of six or as I would prefer to view it, helping defend the world from terrorists. So now, post filing, I can clear the decks of all the books I have read as evasion tactics from dealing with the IRS. This year, I am so fed up, I am coming over to the value added side.
But for this weekend's book. I believe it was recommended by the NY Post (as I refuse to buy the Sunday NYT's and only get week day versions when I have time during lunch at my desk to do the crossword puzzle). The book is To Be a Machine by Mark O'Connell and I will see if the library has any other of his books because this guy can write. OK OK I acknowledge my bias towards Irish writers and their gifts of gab.
In a way, O'Connell reminds me of A J Jacobs and his Mr Know It All, reading the entire encyclopedia Britannica or his other book about trying every diet known the man. It is loaded with healthy skepticism and subtle mockery. O'Connell here chooses to explore the world of transhumanism, a religion/philosophy/at least a movement that human brains can be coded and upload to other platforms and thereby obtain immortality.
At its essence, this posits that human life is entirely about problem solving and the brain is ultimately hierarchical above the body. O'Connell knows his literature, religions and philosophy and debunks this movement as something new, comparing it to many other eternal quests to deny animal death of our "meat" and live forever. He also slants his research to show it is a movement of West Coast geeks who define men as CPUs (I guess because they are all like characters on The Big Bang and cannot deal with their sexuality and other human/mammal emotions.
O'Connell mentions his young son and who his emotions and view of life changed with his birth. He is less obvious in itemizing the non-intellectual joys of every day life. What intellectual reward do I get from trimming bushes, chopping salad ingredients, god forbid dusting? Simple daily pleasures and the fulfillment of family or career related tasks do not factor into transhumanism. A disembodied brain does not have to go to the grocery store, listen to a concert or enjoy breaking the speed limit ... it has to make routine machine like decisions and of course a computer can do that better and perpetuate a person's algorithms.
He describes the key followers/leaders of this front as white male geeks and the multimillionaire computer company founders who support them, men who think machines are the evolutionary next step to humanity. So who are they SysOps? Who controls the maintenance and update cycles? Who deals with power outages? If my immortality and memory for my scions relied on on techies similarly talented to those I have today, I would not want my endless life dependent on reboots or bad system code.
Strangely, this book might drive me back to finish my book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, a book that tried to instruct humans centuries ago how to expect to live forever through being embalmed, entombed and cast to the heavens. Alas, We Are Stardust, We Are Golden and the way back to the Garden isn't in bits of zeroes and ones.
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