Where Will Man Take Us? - Softcover

Jalan, Atul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143446932 ISBN 13: 9780143446934

Publisher: India Portfolio, 2019

Synopsis

The first person who will live to be 150 years has already been born. The screen that we peer into will soon be within us. We could soon be taking happiness pills before breakfast. The perfect partner might need to be charged before bed. This is a new world we are walking into. And the man that began this journey won't be the man that ends this journey. Where Will Man Take Us? explores the changes technology is bringing about in us, as a society and as a species. What will the next generation turn into, what will they be like, how will the new Adam and Eve live and love? In this book, Atul Jalan tackles nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and genetics, and seamlessly weaves the future of technology with the changing dynamics of human love, morality and ethics.

About this title

From the Author

If we pause our hectic present to look at our history, we will observetwo distinctly human capabilities (and their consequences) running inparallel and concurrently - our ability to create stories and our abilityto transform these stories into technology. Which brings us to theconsequences I mentioned earlier. We create stories which transforminto technology and these technologies then go on to transform us.
Think about it. From the wheel to the steam engine to Google, ourinventions have gone on to transform how we live. Our inventionsalways reinvent us. Irreversibly.
Now hold that thought. And apply that to how for the past couple ofcenturies, science fiction has been discussing Artificial Intelligence andGenetic Engineering at length. Very predictably, we have followed thestory-technology pattern. Much of what was science fiction is now real,AI is here in our lives. And the consequence will be true as well. AI willtransform us like never before.
I say this confidently because all this while technology was extrinsic. Butit is not, anymore. Our biology is merging with the technologies wehave invented - giving us control over pain, disease, ageing and maybesoon, even death.
This path AI and Genetic Engineering (and other emergingtechnologies) have put us on, will only end with man elevating himselfinto god. From here on, we can no longer be content with being merehumans.
This reinvention we are going through, has multiple facets. One of themost critical and inevitable, is societal change. And that's where I spendmost time in the book. Much of what defines us as man is directlyimpacted by these transformations and transformational times. As alsosome of our greatest ideas and institutions - love, sex, marriage, jobs,currency, privacy, democracy.
While this is the main plot of this great oeuvre in which all of us areplayers, there are very many interesting sub-plots. As there should be, ina magnum opus. One of the most exciting is this, that in our quest tobring human-like cognition to AI, we are forced to look at ourselves andour brain, a little more closely.
How does this physical 3-pound brain transform into an amorphous,incredible mind? What is it to be human? What is self-awareness? Whatis consciousness? While these questions are age-old, it is only now thatscience has acquired the ability to bring us some pertinent answers.What we conveniently used philosophy and religion to answer, can nowbe explored with a quantitative, algorithmic, scientific lens.
All of this makes this an unbelievably exciting time to be alive. And thisrealisation is what my book Where Will Man Take Us? elaborates on.What I would also wish to point out here is that for most of us in thechange, it is very tough to see it. Most of us are like players in aproduction where we do not see the larger story for what it is, soengrossed are we in our little parts.
I always wonder what Gutenberg's neighbours were up to when he wasrevolutionising mankind. Or what James Watt's neighbours were up to.Or what the Wright brothers' neighbours thought about their soaringambition. Were these people aware that their lives would never be thesame again? Tat their more famous neighbours, though mere mortals,were advancing mankind?
Centuries hence, men will look back on this moment and wonderwhether we saw what was happening around us. Where Will Man TakeUs? calls attention to this. It holds up a mirror to our lives, our worldand our transformation.

About the Author

Atul Jalan, forever on the lookout for the next exciting idea and the next exciting thing to do, is an entrepreneur who is always on the move. A childhood interest in technology transformed into a lasting love-life-technology intersections-through which he now explores how the technology man built is transforming him and the institutions he has created. What interests him the most about this merging of biology with technology is the fact that there is no end to it. There is always something new, something exciting, something surprising around the corner. When not peeking at how technology impacts life next door, Jalan likes to travel-preferably on the bicycle he's built himself with the aid of a few tech tools he is testing. A science storyteller and futurist, Jalan is the founder-CEO of a pioneering AI venture, Manthan, by day. It is his fourth successful venture as an entrepreneur, and there is no knowing where he might take us next.

About this edition

• Publisher: India Portfolio
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0143446932
• ISBN 13: 9780143446934
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272