Wise Animals How Technology Has Made Us what We are

"We have a conflicted relationship with technology, fearing that technological developments may threaten us as individuals, as societies and even as a species, while also embracing them and even imagining that newer technologies may save us from the impact of older ones. Underlying this conflict is a tendency to see our creations as something separate from ourselves, yet the making and using of tools has been central to our species from its emergence: they have been changing both ourselves and the world around us ever since. In Wise Animals, Tom Chatfield excavates human history to uncover our intimate relationship with our technologies. From the personalised hand axes of our Palaeolithic ancestors to the artificial superintelligences of the future, he explores the entwined evolution of our minds and our tools. And he examines a series of delusions that have the portential to harm both ourselves and the world around us: from the delusion of mastery that would make us rulers of the forces governing all other life, to the delusion of brutality that marks conflict and competition as the defining factors in the evolution of our species and our creations. If we can rid ourselves of these preconceptions, Chatfield argues, we might deflect the path of technological development towards the long term interests of humanity, but also of all life on Earth. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of cutting edge research and historical insight, Wise Animals encourages us to rethink everything we thought we knew about technology, and where it might take us in the future."--Page 4 of cover.