Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity?

We are in the midst of a technological revolution. Is it changing what it means to be human?

From genetic engineering to Chat GPT, from cybersex to cyberwar, and from mood-altering pharmaceuticals to the widespread automation of work, new technologies are rewriting the terms of our existence. We celebrate this as ‘progress’ but often these developments are in line with the priorities of power and profit. The bright young things of Silicon Valley celebrate their ability to ‘move fast and break things’. But what if new technologies are breaking us?

In this timely and provocative book, Richard King argues that modern societies need to develop a more critical attitude to new and emerging technologies. We need, he suggests, to rethink our relationship to our tools from a radically humanistic perspective, enlisting philosophy, anthropology and the arts in the fight against dehumanising machines. It is not enough to let the market decide which technologies are good for us. We need to ask what we want from technology. And the question of what we want is a question about who we are.

As science, technology and capitalism fuse, and activists and entrepreneurs talk openly of a ‘post-human’ future in which individuals will transform themselves using data and biotechnologies, we are entering unchartered territory – a territory marked with the mapmaker’s warning, Here Be Dragons … Here Be Monsters. It’s time for a lively conversation about humanity in tech-driven world.