Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle's Ways of Being
is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of
intelligence--plant, animal, human, artificial--and how they transform
our understanding of humans' place in the cosmos.
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or
shared with other beings--beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The
last few years have seen rapid advances in "artificial" intelligence.
But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be
something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that
threatens to decenter and supplant us.
At the same time, we're only just becoming aware of the other
intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we've failed to
recognize or acknowledge them. These others--the animals, plants, and
natural systems that surround us--are slowly revealing their complexity,
agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we've built to sustain
ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can
we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies,
our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with
one another and the nonhuman world?
The artist and maverick thinker James Bridle draws on biology and
physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to answer these
unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the
fascinating, strange, and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and
being that make up the world, and that are essential for our survival.
Includes illustrations
