Re-Engineering Humanity

Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting humanity down an ill-advised path, one that's increasingly making us behave like simple machines? In this wide-reaching, interdisciplinary book, Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger examine what's happening to our lives as society embraces big data, predictive analytics, and smart environments. They explain how the goal of designing programmable worlds goes hand in hand with engineering predictable and programmable people. Detailing new frameworks, provocative case studies, and mind-blowing thought experiments, Frischmann and Selinger reveal hidden connections between fitness trackers, electronic contracts, social media platforms, robotic companions, fake news, autonomous cars, and more. This powerful analysis should be read by anyone interested in understanding exactly how technology threatens the future of our society, and what we can do now to build something better.

Foreword Nicholas Carr; Introduction; Part I: 1. Engineering humans; 2. Cogs in the machine of our own lives; 3. Techno-social engineering creep and the slippery-sloped path; Part II: 4. Tools for engineering humans; 5. Engineering humans with contracts; 6. On extending minds and mind control; 7. The path to smart techno-social environments; 8. Techno-social engineering of humans through smart environments; 9. #RelationshipOptimization; Part III: 10. Turing tests and the line between humans and machines; 11. Can humans be engineered to be incapable of thinking?; 12. Engineered determinism and free will; 13. To what end?; Part IV: 14. Conclusion: reimagining and building alternative futures.

Brett Frischmann is the Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, at Villanova University. He is also an affiliated scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet and Society, Politecnico di Torino. He has published foundational books on the relationships between infrastructural resources, governance, commons, and spillovers, including Governing Medical Knowledge Commons, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg (Cambridge, 2017); Governing Knowledge Commons, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg (2014); and Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (2012).
Evan Selinger is Professor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he is also the Head of Research Communications, Community, and Ethics at the Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction, and Creativity. A Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum, his primary research is on the ethical and privacy dimensions of emerging technology. Selinger has co-edited The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy, with Jules Polontesky and Omer Tene (Cambridge, 2018). A strong advocate of public philosophy, he regularly writes for magazines, newspapers, and blogs, including?the Guardian, The Atlantic, Slate, and?Wired.