How to Fix the Future

But in spite of promises about the imminent merging of man and computer by prophets of the “Singularity”—such as Google’s chief futurist, Ray Kurzweil, who still insists that this synthesis will inevitably happen by 2029—we humans, for the moment at least, are no speedier, no smarter, and, really, no more self-aware than we were back in 1965.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity,” the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant suggested, “no straight thing was ever made

This crisis of our elites explains not only the scarcity of trust bedeviling most advanced democracies but also the populist ressentiment on both left and right,

John Borthwick’s manifesto, his own five bullets to fix the digital future:

• Open technology platforms

• Antitrust regulation

• Responsible human-centric design

• The preservation of public space

• A new social security system

Besides, if we don’t believe in our own humanity, then what can we believe in?

Memento
mori . . . Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento,” the slaves would shout at the triumphant general during the public parade after a great military victory. “Yes, you will die,” the slave reminded the Roman hero. “But until then, remember you’re a man.”

Thomas More critiqued in Utopia. “Your sheep that commonly are so meek and eat so little,” More wrote acidly about sixteenth-century England, “have become so greedy and fierce that they devour human beings themselves.”

The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus had just stumbled on the almost unspeakable realization that our planet wasn’t the center of the universe.

The democratizing technology of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press was undermining the centuries-old authority of the Catholic clergy.

Everything is getting perpetually upgraded except us