Books

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A book on the challenge of being human in the digital age. I caution against overconfident claims about our collective digital future. It's good that there are a currently many ideas about how humans could live with AI and other digital technologies. What's wrong is the certainly with which too many of these are advanced. This book calls for a social-digital economy., Machines would exile humans from the part of the economy that privileges efficiency. Humans would dominate the social economy that privileges interactions between human minds. You shouldn't marry a machine and nor should you accept a cyber-barista. These are roles for humans.

Translated into Italian as Non essere una macchina (2020) https://www.luissuniversitypress.it/pubblicazioni/non-essere-una-macchina

This book presents a model of the effects of technological progress on well-being. I argue that there is something paradoxical about the effects of technological progress on well-being. We imagine future technologies and suppose that these would make us much happier. But this belief seems difficult to square with seemingly modest improvement in subjective well-being since centuries past. The phenomenon of hedonic normalisation explains this pattern - we accept as normal the technologies that exist as we come to maturity., Those who look to technological advances to bring great collective happiness - cures for cancer and vacation resorts on Mars - overlook this fact.  For a summary of the idea of hedonic normalisation see https://blog.oup.com/2015/07/future-of-technology/