Show Notes
We live in a culture hooked on speed and certainty. Hot takes, quick fixes, and algorithms that claim to know us better than we know ourselves. Yet despite all the information at our fingertips, the world seems to make less sense by the day.
In this episode, renowned travel writer Pico Iyer describes how globalization – which offered up the mirage of a global monoculture – has instead led to a clash of civilizations and identity. For Pico, wisdom resides not in mastery but in doubt. From his decades of constant travel to his retreats in silence, Iyer describes how humility and stillness can open a clearer view of the world than certainty ever could.
More from Futurology
Hypocrisy, the old line goes, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. For eighty years, the powerful at least bothered to pay it, citing human rights, national security, and democracy as reasons for starting wars and undercutting liberties. Now the veneers have been stripped, and the next generation is not accepting business as usual.
Machines are starting to act like humans. Does that mean they’re conscious? The problem is we haven’t been able to prove how or why humans are conscious yet either. So why would we be able to offer any answers about AI?
Democracy counts people, not plants. Humans are only a sliver of life on this planet, but today, we're the only ones who get a vote. What if we gave rights to rivers and standing to trees?
Somewhere around the Enlightenment we decided that thinking was what made us human. We built our schools, careers, and sense of worth at the altar of intelligence. Now machines are passing us on that rubric, which leaves two possibilities: we were replaceable all along, or we picked the wrong standard to live by.
Relying on machines to coordinate our lives was just one step toward decentering humanity’s role in the world. Flights, banking, trade, food production... But as we start merging our actual decision-making with digital entities, exactly which pieces of humanity are we leaving behind? And how might we bring those pieces back?