Mark O'Connell (3) (1979–)

To Be a Machine, by Mark O’Connell, won the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize. It introduces the reader to transhumanism, a movement that aims, by various means, to allow humans to defeat the problem of aging and thereby death. The transhumanist really believes we can transcend the flesh via technology and solve death. And while, as a Christian, I find this movement to be morally repugnant, I also find it fascinating for some strange reason (maybe it is the sci-fi nerd in me?). Mark O’Connell, makes a journalistic inquiry into the current form of this movement and explores ideas as radical as uploading of minds in computers, post-death cryonic suspension of human bodies to be revived later by some yet-to-be developed advanced technology, cyborgs, technological singularity etc. The book also discusses the ethical questions posed by these technologies in a manner that is accessible to the everyday reader.

This is not a book that champions the transhumanist movement but rather explores it with a journalistic skepticism. And I happen to share O'Connell's bemused skepticism of singularitarians and transhumanists.
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