Is technology antihuman?

PLUS: More of WIRED's best longreads from this week.   |    WIRED Longreads newsletter " ongreads % 05.14.23 Doug Rushkoff sitting in a bathtub working on a laptop. Doug Rushkoff Is Ready to Renounce the Digital Revolution Doug Rushkoff, a prolific writer and media theorist, was one of the original believers in tech’s limitless potential. In the nineties, as a cyberpunk representative of Gen X, he championed the internet as the surest way forward to a renegade, antigovernment future. As Silicon Valley gave over to Big Tech, he stayed on the fringes, resolutely pushing his humanist values in the face of corporate greed. These days, however, Rushkoff has finally cut ties with the technosolutionism crowd and ditched his utopian dreams for good. What happened? This is the question Malcolm Harris takes up in a thoughtful and astute . Harris, himself a prominent voice of the millennial generation, practically grew up on Rushkoff. In high school he watched Rushkoff’s canny PBS documentaries exposing the ills of advertising; years later, in an early job, he encountered Rushkoff’s writings on the benefits of a prosocial internet. That was 2010, a time when it was still possible to believe that the internet could be a connector of people and creator of material abundance. But the rise of companies like Uber and Airbnb, and the increasing reach of Amazon and Meta—not to mention the recent fall of FTX and the cryptocurrency scammers who ran it—have put these ideals to rest. “I’ve come to see these technologies as intrinsically antihuman,” Rushkoff tells Harris. He’s still rooting for the revolution—it’s just that now, tech is no longer a part of it. — Camille Bromley | Features Editor READ THE FULL STORY You Might Also Like Photo collage of acupuncture needles in a hand, complex computer wires, and a video of flowing vapor The Surprising Synergy Between Acupuncture and AI BY SAFFRON HUANG | 11-MINUTE READ Now that I work in machine learning, I’m often struck by the parallels between this cutting-edge technology and traditional Chinese medicine. Geoff Hinton What Really Made Geoffrey Hinton Into an AI Doomer BY WILL KNIGHT | 6-MINUTE READ The AI pioneer is alarmed by how clever the technology he helped create has become. And it all started with a joke. ADVERTISEMENT bubble A ‘Monumental’ Math Proof Solves the Triple Bubble Problem BY ERICA KLARREICH | 9-MINUTE READ A decades-old conjecture about the best way to minimize the surface area of a three-bubble cluster seemed unprovable—until a breakthrough result. portrait of Jason Parham's face partially covered by textured glass Reality TV Saved Me BY JASON PARHAM | 11-MINUTE READ During the worst year of my life, I needed it more than ever. And I needed to understand why. sea lamprey At Last, ‘Ugly’ Sea Lampreys Are Getting Some Respect BY TED WILLIAMS | 7-MINUTE READ Fisheries managers are recognizing the ecological importance of the maligned marine suckers and are stepping up efforts to help their populations recover. GET WIRED ADVERTISEMENT Fresh dogfood, delivered. Dognotincluded. T (image) WIRED Logo ' I Z1E (image) WIRED on Facebook(image) WIRED on Twitter(image) WIRED on Instagram(image) WIRED on LinkedIn(image) WIRED on YouTubePodcasts Have questions or comments? Reply to this email. This email was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our email address, [email protected], to your address book. View our  or manage your newsletter subscriptions