MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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The genius concealed in the non-human realm
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a strangely reassuring book, grounded in exploring our alienation and the creative possibilities inherent in embracing cognitive diversity
Recognising alternative intelligences in the expansive taxonomy of life
[John/CC]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
James Bridle
Allen Lane, £20
IT IS impossible not to be enthused by James Bridle’s epic vision of a future in which digital technology is repurposed to reconcile a blinkered, supremacist human intelligence with the “more-than-human” aptitudes of animals and plants.
Every page written by this original thinker bubbles like primordial soup with optimism about the possibilities were our benighted species to look beyond its navel for solutions to the many problems it has visited upon the natural world.
Ways of Being is Bridle’s manifesto for an “ecology of technology” that recognises alternative intelligences in the expansive taxonomy of life with which humans can collaborate in a bold experiment in mutual benefit to create a truly just world.
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ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an entertaining, useful guide to the threats and promises of mathematical rationality
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
In the second and final part of his article MIKE SCOTT posits that if we don’t control AI while we’ve got the chance, we could be signing the death warrant for our children and grandchildren