OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance Humachines, Big Tech, & Our Future | Michael D.B. Harvey
A dystopian fusion of human and machine is being pushed on us by a big tech elite. Michael D.B. Harvey, author of The Age of Humachines: Big Tech and the Battle for Humanity's Future, warns of the 'humachinator' worldview that weds unrestrained technology and capitalism - and what we might do to reclaim a future rooted in democracy and ecological balance. Highlights include:
- How the 'humachine' blurs the line between human and machine, technologizing everything and everyone;
- How the history of scientism and empiricism has led humachinators to imagine the brain as a computer and the body as a machine and the belief that engineering can control humanity, biophysical laws, and even death itself;
- How big tech oligarchs merge unfettered science with unfettered capitalism to produce 'ultrascience';
- Why big tech oligarchs' faith in unrestrained technology and markets has merged into 'ontocapitalism' - a form of capitalism that commodifies nature and all human experience;
- How humachinators use 'tricknology' to hype their technologies and get us, especially the young, addicted to their products;
- What the five types of humachination are: cognitive, emotional, relational, the mechanized human, and a totalizing daily environment where our lives are surveilled, interpreted, and mediated by machines;
- How the extreme individualism in Silicon Valley undermines democracy and collective decision-making;
- How the 'G' word, growth, is behind all the humachinators' actions and dreams;
- Why our relationship with technology is ultimately political, not inevitable, and that we need to resist big tech oligarchs who profit most from unrestricted technology;
- Why we need to move from CIMENT values (competitiveness, individualism, materialism, elitism, nationalism, and technologism) to CANDID values (cooperative, altruistic, non-materialist, democratic, internationalist, and deferential to nature) - and how we might shift those values.
See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:
https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/michael-db-harvey
OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance
OVERSHOOT tackles today’s interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity’s excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all beings.
Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.
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