‘Disconcerting . . . a disturbing and important book’ NEW SCIENTIST
‘Smart and wonderfully readable’ NEW YORK TIMES
The bad science and sinister ideas behind Silicon Valley’s foolish obsession with immortality, AI paradise and limitless growth.
Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs.
In More Everything Forever, scientist and writer Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow to reveal why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass. The giants of Silicon Valley claim that their ideas are based on science, but the truth is darker: they come from a jumbled mix of shallow futurism and racist pseudoscience. And behind these fanciful visions of space colonies and digital immortality is a cynical power grab, at the expense of essential work spent on solving real problems like the climate crisis.
More Everything Forever exposes the powerful myths that dominate Silicon Valley, challenging us to see how foolish, and dangerous, these visions of the future are.
‘Smart and wonderfully readable’ NEW YORK TIMES
The bad science and sinister ideas behind Silicon Valley’s foolish obsession with immortality, AI paradise and limitless growth.
Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs.
In More Everything Forever, scientist and writer Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow to reveal why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass. The giants of Silicon Valley claim that their ideas are based on science, but the truth is darker: they come from a jumbled mix of shallow futurism and racist pseudoscience. And behind these fanciful visions of space colonies and digital immortality is a cynical power grab, at the expense of essential work spent on solving real problems like the climate crisis.
More Everything Forever exposes the powerful myths that dominate Silicon Valley, challenging us to see how foolish, and dangerous, these visions of the future are.
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Reviews
With a wild and utterly engaging narrative, Becker gives us a refreshing reality check on the fantasies of billionaires, futurists and utilitarian philosophers who are plotting to "optimize" the future of humanity. A fascinating exposé
I love this book. Becker has become our greatest prophet of doom
Our world has fallen into the clutches of billionaires who mistake dystopian science-fiction stories for suggestions, rather than warnings. Speaking in my capacity as a dystopian science-fiction writer, I can confirm that this isn't merely very stupid, it's also very, very bad
Disconcerting . . . More Everything Forever is a disturbing and important book
Smart and wonderfully readable . . . Amid [Becker's] sharp criticisms of the tech figures he writes about is a resolute call for compassion. He encourages us not to get hung up on galaxies far, far away but to pay more attention to our own fragile planet and the frail humans around us
Becker subjects Silicon Valley's ideology to some much-needed critical scrutiny, poking holes in - and a decent amount of fun at - the outlandish ideas that so many tech billionaires take as gospel. In so doing, he champions reality while also exposing the dangers of letting the tech billionaires push us toward a future that could never actually exist
With admirable clarity and patience, Becker dismantles the fantasies one by one: the AI apocalypse that obscures the real and immediate problems the algorithms are causing, concerning bias, misinformation and energy consumption; the absurd notion of "mind uploading" and the transcendental Singularity that will grant us immortality in a digital nirvana ("All of humanity, running on a computer, until the end of time"); the pipe dream of creating a civilization of billions on airless, frigid, radiation-strafed Mars . . . Writing More Everything Forever took guts
A much-needed reality check . . . A valuable meditation on the questionable stories we tell about progress, salvation, and ourselves
An important book as well as a good one. A really significant contribution to our discussion of the future . . . Becker's book is very entertaining as it exposes how the emperor has no clothes