To Be a Machine

As a Wellcome Book Prize winner, this was a bit of disappointment. This is less a book about transhumanism than it is about O'Connell's own “journey”, as a journalist and a sceptical, bewildered outsider looking in on the movement. He spends more time trying to describe how “odd” these personalities are, which he's not wrong about, seeing as how most of them are quasi-religious, cult-like, and highly irrational, but he spends very little time exploring in depth the many scientific, moral, and existential issues that surround our growing reliance on technology, and the possible future uses of technology to extend life and modify the human body. Yes, there may currently be very little scientific support for the beliefs of many of the people in this book, but that doesn't mean these questions and discussions should be dismissed as “sci-fi” or modern day forms of religion. Technology has dramatically changed our world over time, and will surely continue to do so in the future, even if it is not in the ways today's transhumanists want, so it was disappointing how insubstantial and surface-level this book felt in exploring these issues.