Ever Not Quite

Welcome to Ever Not Quite —essays about technology and humanism. This one is about the tech-entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s much-publicized designs on biological immortality and the Don’t Die movement of which he is the founder and leader. With the help of the American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, whose 1973 book The Denial of Death has influenced a generation of readers from diverse discip...

Welcome to Ever Not Quite —essays about technology and humanism. This essay attempts to name something for which—or so it seems to me—we have lacked a satisfactory term. I have argued before against the reasoning which attempts to defend human preeminence by insisting that “no technology could ever do ‘X’”, however sophisticated or impressive the ‘X’ in question might be. This, it seems to me, is...

How industry is talking about the AI rollout

Building in the Ruins On what comes after techno-optimism

Crisis and Revelation “Things Aren’t Getting Worse. The Truth is Just Being Revealed.”

Strange Shadows [Part II] Two centuries of photography have prepared the way for algorithmically-generated images. Now the image-world is becoming a Museum of Babel.

Strange Shadows [Part I] Two centuries of photography have prepared the way for algorithmically-generated images. Now the image-world is becoming a Museum of Babel.

This Is Not an Automated Message On what we lose when machines do the writing

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace Reflections on the “humanity of the gaps” and techno-humanism Welcome to Ever Not Quite —essays about technology and humanism. I began the line of thought that grew into this essay modestly, by wondering about our expressions of enthusiasm for technological innovation—for new things and gadgets generally. Why do such feats of engineering elicit, for ins...

Welcome to  Ever Not Quite —essays about technology and humanism. This post is my attempt to take stock of the effective altruism movement (EA), which has made major inroads into the popular mind over the past several years, and with which most readers are likely already familiar. The twentieth century Buddhist philosopher Keiji Nishitani once wrote that a consequence of the modern scientific inte...

On Common Sense and Expertise - Hannah Arendt on technology and scientific knowledge Read the post here . Happy New Year! And welcome to  Ever Not Quite , a newsletter about technology and humanism. This essay responds to what I call a “strange fissure” that seems to run through modern technologists, who possess a technical competence that gives them authority over those who don’t share their expe...

Read the post here .

Read the post here .

Read the post here .