Show Notes
Today it’s the first episode in a new series about the weird and wonderful world of transhumanism: the idea that human beings can be transformed by technology and machines. David talks to historian of ideas Duncan Bell about transhumanism as science and as science fiction, as accurate prophecy and as outright lunacy. How did the idea have its origins in Darwinism? Why did the early transhumanists tend to be socialists? What made H. G. Wells such an influence on supposedly respectable scientists? And how does all this foreshadow the world of Silicon Valley today?
A reminder that we have a pair of new educational courses to accompany two of our series – The Great Essays and The Lives of the Philosophers. These courses are free for anyone who wants to use them and offer recall tests, extensive reading guides, discussion topics and essay questions for further reading, writing and exploration around the subjects of our podcasts. For use in schools, colleges or just in your spare time. To explore these courses simply go to https://ppfideas.com/courses
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More from Past Present Future
Today’s episode is the second part of David's conversation with historian William Whyte about how universities have survived for nearly a thousand years and whether they can last much longer. How did the industrial revolution change what universities were for? Why did the attempt by French and Russian revolutionaries to abolish universities come to nothing? What made universities symbols of modernisation? And can institutions that have adapted to just about everything adapt to the digital revolution as well?
We start a new series about the long history and current predicament of universities by going back to the beginning. David talks to historian William Whyte about the origin story of the university nearly one thousand years ago. What made universities different from other places of learning? How did they assert their authority? Who controlled what they did? And how did they survive war, plague, religious turmoil and the arrival of printing?
Today’s episode in our series about transhumanism and its astonishing influence looks at how it helped build Silicon Valley. David talks to Duncan Bell about what happened when California became the centre of transhumanist operations. Where do drug-taking hippies fit into this story? Who were the cyberpunks and what did they want? How were Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others shaped by the transhumanism they discovered while growing up? And is all this really just a surrogate religion?
In part two of our series about how transhumanism shaped our world, David talks to Duncan Bell about what happened when sci fi dreams started to become reality. What changed when space travel turned from fantasy to fact? Did supercomputers herald new human possibilities or the prospect of human obsolescence? Why did transhumanism move from the left to the right of the political spectrum? And who believed that freezing their own heads was a good idea?
For the final episode in our series on living in an ageing world David talks to Lyndsey Stonebridge about one of the most interesting and challenging of all writers on the subject of old age – Simone de Beauvoir. Why did Beauvoir believe that we are all duplicitous about the elderly? How did she experience her own ageing body and the prospect of her own death? What did she learn from watching Sartre age and die? And what makes her a prophet for the world we live in today?