Tag Archives: robotics

Richard Watson on The Future, Automation and AI

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I did a talk at the University of Northampton Business School last week, but before I started I spoke to John Griff at BBC Radio Northampton. The funny thing was that while I’d been told about this well in advance I’d totally forgotten. Hence zero preparation on my part. But guess what, because I didn’t prepare anything I didn’t obsess about what I was going to say and therefore didn’t screw it up (also due to an excellent interviewer that asked some good questions and put me at ease btw).

One of my more intelligent interviews with a great ending…

BBC iPlayer….(spool on to 1 minute 15 seconds)

Digital vs Human (final fiddle)

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Back page text

It’s hard to believe, but the book goes on. Days away from printing now, but still trying to get the cover right and also re-writing the back cover text at the last minute. The key thing here is obviously to convey what the book is about for people that haven’t read it (and one supposes don’t have more than about ten seconds to do so before they move on to another book). The current words are below, with the first pass below that. The key point, for me at least, is not that the book is about digital systems, robotics or artificial intelligence, but the looming battle between human and digital minds. More specifically, it’s about what a small group of people is arguably imposing on the rest of the human race. This has shades of the 1% (or the 99%), but also the banking crisis. This is an observation that’s been picked up by one of my favourite columnists at the Financial Times, Gillian Tett. Prior to 2007/8 banking was run by a tiny group of people and nobody else really understood what they were doing. IT at the cutting edge is much the same. It’s a small group of experts and almost nobody else has a clue about what they are doing or what the longer-term consequences might be.

Current re-write.
From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book you need to prepare for tomorrow.

Life has never been better. By most measures our physical lives have improved greatly in recent years. So why do we feel that all is not well? As technologies developed by a tiny handful of designers and developers are changing our lives, we are beginning to question whose interests are being served. Are they here for our benefit? Or are we here for theirs? Richard Watson hereby extends an exuberant invitation to look more closely at the world we’re creating and think more deeply about who it is that we want to be.

Original text including my edit comments (in bold)
The blurb may require cuts to fit into the back cover design. Our current proposal is the following: Surely there is room at the front or more likely the back to run or repeat all the quotes?

From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book to help you prepare for tomorrow.

On most measures that matter, we’ve never had it so good. Physically, life for humankind has improved immeasurably over the last fifty years. Yet, spreading across the world, there is a crisis of confidence in progress. Jumps….
(Do we even need most of the above? How about simply starting with the below and creating room for more testimonials? For example…

From the author of the international bestseller Future Files comes the one book you need to read to prepare for the world of tomorrow. (Still jumps?) To a large degree, the history of the next fifty years will be about the relationship between people and technologies created by a tiny handful of designers and developers. These (their?) inventions will undoubtedly change our lives, but just what are they capable of, and — as they transform the media, the economy, healthcare, education, work, and the home — what kind of lives do we want to lead?

Richard Watson, the author of the international bestseller Future Files, hereby extends an exuberant invitation for us to think deeply about the world of today and envision what kind of world we wish to create in the future. (for tomorrow?).

Digital vs. Human: Bibliography

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Here’s a list of books referenced in my new book Digital vs. Human or otherwise useful. I will update the list across 2016. If readers have any further suggestions please add to the comments. And yes, I know, the links are mostly to Amazon, but this is a blog and I figured it was easy in this particular instance. Order from a physical bookshop if you can.

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Angwin, Julia, Dragnet Nation: a quest for privacy, security, and freedom in a world of relentless surveillance, Henry Holt, 2014. Video here.

Arkin, Ronald, Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots, Chapman and Hall, 2009

Armstrong, Stuart, Smarter Than Us: the rise of machine intelligence, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, 2015. Video here.
Barrat, James, Our Final Invention: artificial intelligence and the end of the Human Era, St Martin’s Press, 2013. Video here.
Bartlett, Jamie, The Dark Net: inside the digital underworld, William Heinemann, 2014. Video here.

 

Bell, Gordon and Gemmell, Jim, Total Recall: how the e-memory revolution will change
everything, Dutton, 2009.

 

Bostrom, Nick, Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?, http://www.simulation-argument.com/ Video here.

 

Boyd, Danah, It’s Complicated: the social lives of networked teens, Yale University
Press, 2014. Video here.

Brynjolfsson, Erik and McAfee, Andrew, Race against the Machine: how the digital
revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly
transforming employment and the economy, Digital Frontier, 2011. Video here. See also PDF.

——, The Second Machine Age: work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant
technologies, WW Norton, 2014. Video here.

 

Bywater, Michael, Lost Worlds: what have we lost, and where did it go?, Granta, 2004

 

Carr, Nicholas, The Glass Cage: automation and us, WW Norton, 2014. Video here.

 

Christodoulou, Daisy, Seven Myths about Education, Routledge, 2014

 

Clippinger, John, Crowd of One: the future of individual identity, PublicAffairs, 2007
Coupland, Douglas, Microserfs, Regan, 1995

 

Cowen, Tyler, Average is Over: powering America beyond the age of the great
stagnation, Dutton, 2013. Video here and here.

Davis, Devra, Disconnect, Dutton, 2010. Video here.

Dorling, Danny, All That is Solid: the great housing disaster, Allen Lane, 2014. Video here.

Dyson, George, Darwin among the Machines: the evolution of global intelligence,
Perseus, 1997

Ford, Martin, Rise of the Robots: technology and the threat of a jobless future, Basic
Books, 2015. Video here.

Forsyth, Mark, The Unknown Unknown: bookshops and the delight of not getting what
you wanted, Icon, 2014

Gardner, Dan, Future Babble: why expert predictions are wrong — and why we believe
them anyway, Scribe, 2010, Video here.

Gardner, Howard and Davis, Kate, The App Generation: how today’s youth navigate
identity, intimacy, and imagination in a digital world, Yale University Press, 2013. Video here.

Gleick, James, Faster: the acceleration of just about everything, Pantheon, 1999. Discussion of book on video here.

Greenfield, Susan, Mind Change: how digital technologies are leaving their mark on our
brains, Rider, 2014. Video here.

 

Greenstein, Shane, How the Internet Became Commercial: innovation, privatisation, and
the birth of a new network, Princeton University Press, 2015. Video here.

 

Handy, Charles, The Empty Raincoat: making sense of the future, Hutchinson, 1993

 

——, The Second Curve: thoughts on reinventing society, Random House, 2015

 

Harari, Yuval, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind, Harvill Secker, 2014. Video here.

 

Harris, Michael, The End of Absence: reclaiming what we’ve lost in a world of constant
connection, Current, 2014. VRadio interview here.

 

Head, Simon, Mindless: why smarter machines are making dumber humans, Basic
Books, 2013

 

Johnson, Steven, Future Perfect: the case for progress in a networked age, Riverhead,
2012. Video here.

 

Kaplan, Jerry, Humans Need Not Apply: a guide to wealth and work in the age of
artificial intelligence, Yale University Press, 2015. Video here.
Keen, Andrew, Digital Vertigo: how today’s online society is dividing, diminishing, and disorientating us, St Martin’s Press, 2012.  Video here.
——, The Internet is Not the Answer, Atlantic, 2014. Video here.

 

Lanier, Jaron, Who Owns the Future?, Simon & Schuster, 2013. Video here.

 

——, You Are Not a Gadget, Knopf, 2010. Video here.

 

Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations, WW Norton, 1978. Video here.

 

Louv, Richard, Last Child in the Woods: saving our children from nature-deficit
disorder, Algonquin Books, 2005. Video here.

 

Markoff, John, Machines of Loving Grace: the quest for common ground between
humans and robots, HarperCollins, 2015. Video here.

 

Marwick, Alice, Status Update: celebrity, publicity, and branding in the social media
age, Yale University Press, 2013. Radio interview here.

 

Mayer-Schnoberger, Viktor, Big Data: a revolution that will transform how we work,
live, and think, Houghton Mifflin Hartcourt, 2013. Video here.

 

——, Delete: the virtue of forgetting in the digital age, Princeton University Press, 2009. Video here.

 

Morozov, Evgeny, To Save Everything, Click Here: the folly of technological
solutionism, PublicAffairs, 2013. Video here.

 

Newton, Richard, The End of Nice: how to be human in a world run by robots, self-
published, 2015. Video here.

 

Pasquale, Frank, The Black Box Society: the secret algorithms that control money and
information, Harvard University Press, 2015. Video here.

 

Pinker, Susan, The Village Effect: how face-to-face contact can make us healthier,
happier, and smarter, Spiegel & Grau, 2014. Video here.

 

Postman, Neil, Amusing Ourselves to Death: public discourse in the age of show
business, Methuen, 1984

 

Rosen, Larry, iDisorder: understanding our obsession with technology and overcoming
its hold on us, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

 

Rubin, Charles, Eclipse of Man: human extinction and the meaning of progress,
Encounter books, 2014.

 

Rushkoff, Douglas, Present Shock: when everything happens now, Current, 2013. Video here.
Saul, John, Voltaire’s Bastards: the dictatorship of reason in the West, Viking, 1991. Video here.

 

Schmidt, Eric and Cohen, Jared, The New Digital Age: reshaping the future of people,
nations, and business, Knopf, 2013. Video here.

 

Schumacher, E.F., Small is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered, Blond
& Briggs, 1973. Short film here.

 

Seidensticker, Bob, Future Hype: the myth of technology change, Berrett-Koehler, 2006

 

Silberman, Steve, Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and how to think smarter about
people who think differently, Allen & Unwin, 2015. Video here.

 

Singer, P.W., Wired for War: the robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century,
Penguin Press, 2009. Video here.

 

Snow, C.P, The Two Cultures, Cambridge University Press, 1959. Another download here.

 

Steiner, Christopher, Automate this: how algorithms came to rule our world, Portfolio,
2012. Video here.

 

Taylor, Frederick, The Downfall of Money: Germany’s hyperinflation and the destruction
of the middle class, Bloomsbury, 2013. Download here.

 

Toffler, Alvin & Heidi, Future Shock, Random House, 1970. Video here.

 

Tucker, Patrick, The Naked Future: what happens in a world that anticipates your every
move, Current, 2014. Video here.

 

Turkle, Sherry, Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each
other, Basic Books, 2010. Video here.

 

——, Reclaiming Conversation: the power of talk in a digital age, Penguin Press, 2015. Video here.

 

Turner, Fred, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth
Network, and the rise of digital utopianism, University of Chicago Press, 2006. Video here.

 

Twenge, Jean and Campbell, Keith, The Narcissism Epidemic: living in the age of
entitlement, Atria, 2009. Video here.

 

Wallach, Wendell, A Dangerous Master: how to keep technology from slipping beyond
our control, Basic Books, 2015. Video here.

 

Wallman, James, Stuffocation: how we’ve had enough of stuff and why you need
experience more than ever, Crux, 2013

 

Zarkadakis, George, In Our Own Image: will artificial intelligence save or destroy us?,
Ebury, 2015. Video discussion here.
Zeldin, Theodore, An Intimate History of Humanity, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994

 

——, The Hidden Pleasures of Life: a new way of remembering the past and imagining
the future, MacLehose Press, 2015