It is now arguably the dominant perspective to see human history as progressive. This has not always been the case. The Judaeo-Christian view envisions a fall from a primary state of divine favour and perfection; the Greek poet Herodotus saw…
Science fiction authors have been warning us for decades of the dangers technology poses. Recently, advances in artificial intelligence and robotics seem to suggest that they have been right all along. Computers are now driving cars and piloting automated weapons…
Sci-fi has long agreed that the one thing missing from Artificial Intelligence is emotion. From Star Trek’s Data to Arnie’s Terminator, the capacity to feel anger, sadness, joy, etc, has been taken as a milestone past which robots and computers…
First published in 1986, and updated in 1993, Roszak’s book is now dated in a number of respects – a danger likely to befall any account of contemporary technology. And so, even with the updated edition, this makes some of…
The dream of immortality is an ancient one, but it is only in comparatively recent times that the means of its realisation has shifted from a religious and spiritual concern to a secular and technological ambition. Its current incarnation is…
Depression and anxiety are now so widespread that it is tempting to see them as by-products of modern society itself, as the necessary price we pay for the techno marvels of our media-saturated, super-connected and fast paced world. Of course,…
This book deserves to be much better known. Its basic premise is that the notion of the unconscious can best be understood in terms of neuroscience – specifically, though the idea that the right hemisphere of the brain supplies a…