God, Human, Animal, Machine
Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $23.31
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Rebecca Lowman
-
Written by:
-
Meghan O'Gieblyn
About this listen
A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future."—Phillip Lopate
“[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein
For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking.
Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
©2021 Meghan O'Gieblyn (P)2021 Random House AudioYou may also enjoy...
-
The Ends of the World
- Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
- Written by: Peter Brannen
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our world has ended five times: It has been broiled, frozen, poison gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth's past dead ends, and in the process offers us a glimpse of our possible future. Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the 21st century have analogs in these five extinctions.
-
-
Fantastic
- By christocracy on 2023-07-11
Written by: Peter Brannen
-
Chip War
- The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
- Written by: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.
-
-
Transistor, transistor, transistor.
- By Vitalii on 2022-11-30
Written by: Chris Miller
-
Ways of Being
- Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
- Written by: James Bridle
- Narrated by: James Bridle
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings—beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence.
-
-
I couldn’t have imagined the journey this book takes
- By Anonymous User on 2023-10-03
Written by: James Bridle
-
Dark Wire
- The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
- Written by: Joseph Cox
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes--the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organized crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement. Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld.
-
-
When the hunters spy on the hunted
- By Gerry Corcoran on 2024-07-16
Written by: Joseph Cox
-
Interior States
- Essays
- Written by: Meghan O'Gieblyn
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country". She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still", and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the 15 superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection.
Written by: Meghan O'Gieblyn
-
Survival of the Richest
- Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
- Written by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters, Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.
-
-
Misleading Title
- By DFrost on 2022-09-28
Written by: Douglas Rushkoff
-
The Ends of the World
- Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
- Written by: Peter Brannen
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our world has ended five times: It has been broiled, frozen, poison gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth's past dead ends, and in the process offers us a glimpse of our possible future. Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the 21st century have analogs in these five extinctions.
-
-
Fantastic
- By christocracy on 2023-07-11
Written by: Peter Brannen
-
Chip War
- The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
- Written by: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.
-
-
Transistor, transistor, transistor.
- By Vitalii on 2022-11-30
Written by: Chris Miller
-
Ways of Being
- Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
- Written by: James Bridle
- Narrated by: James Bridle
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings—beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence.
-
-
I couldn’t have imagined the journey this book takes
- By Anonymous User on 2023-10-03
Written by: James Bridle
-
Dark Wire
- The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
- Written by: Joseph Cox
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes--the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organized crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement. Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld.
-
-
When the hunters spy on the hunted
- By Gerry Corcoran on 2024-07-16
Written by: Joseph Cox
-
Interior States
- Essays
- Written by: Meghan O'Gieblyn
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country". She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still", and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the 15 superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection.
Written by: Meghan O'Gieblyn
-
Survival of the Richest
- Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
- Written by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters, Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.
-
-
Misleading Title
- By DFrost on 2022-09-28
Written by: Douglas Rushkoff
What the critics say
Recipient of the Benjamin Hadley Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science & Technology
Featured on the New York Times Book Review’s Paperback Row
“O’Gieblyn’s loosely linked and rigorously thoughtful meditations on technology, humanity and religion mount a convincing and occasionally moving apologia for that ineliminable wrench in the system, the element that not only browses and buys but feels: the embattled, anachronistic and indispensable self. God, Human, Animal, Machine is a hybrid beast, a remarkably erudite work of history, criticism and philosophy, but it is also, crucially, a memoir.”—The New York Times
“Meghan O’Gieblyn’s essays are 'personal' in that they are portraits of the private thoughts, curiosities, and uncertainties that thrive in O’Gieblyn’s mind about selfhood, meaning, moral responsibility, and faith. There's nowhere her avid intellect won't go in its quest to find, if not 'meaning,' then the available modern tools we might use, today, as humans, to create it. O’Gieblyn is a brilliant and humble philosopher, and her book is an explosively thought-provoking, candidly personal ride I wished never to end. This book is such an original synthesis of ideas and disclosures. It introduces what will soon be called the O’Gieblyn genre of essay writing.”—Heidi Julavits, author of The Folded Clock
"A fascinating exploration of our enchantment with technology."—Eula Biss, author of Having and Being Had
What listeners say about God, Human, Animal, Machine
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Glen Barber
- 2023-08-07
good philosophical book
interesting and unique book merging philosophy, consciousness, religion and tech. The author also weaves in a personal narrative which complements the topics. Very philosophical in tone.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!