Book cover of Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

Book description

Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence―plant, animal, human, artificial―and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos.

What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Ways of Being as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Futurists often lament the current state of artificial intelligence and the harm it might do to us, our society, and our planet. So, I was thrilled to read Bridle’s thoughts on reengineering the future of AI.

The artificial intelligence of today is what it is because it was created by corporations with corporate goals in mind. But what if those goals were subverted?

What if we could reconstruct AI as an oracle tasked with listening to everything that speaks? What if we could use AI not to discover new oil fields or to spy on our enemies but to hear…

If you love Ways of Being...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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