Title: Where Will Man Take Us?
Author: Atul Jalan
Publisher: Penguin Portfolio
Genre: Non-Fiction
First Publication: 2019
Language: English
Book Summary: Where Will Man Take Us?
The first person who will live to be 150 years old has already been born.
The screen that we peer into will soon be within us.
We could soon be taking happiness pills before breakfast.
The perfect partner might need to be charged before bed.
This is a new world we are walking into. And the man who began this journey won’t be the man who ends this journey. Where Will Man Take Us? explores the changes technology is bringing about in us-as a society and as a species. What will the next generation turn into, what will it be like, how will the new Adam and Eve live and love?
In this book, Atul Jalan tackles nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and genetics, seamlessly weaving the future of technology with the changing dynamics of human love, morality and ethics.
Book Review: Where Will Man Take Us?
For most of my life, I’ve been an avid reader of fiction — in fact, as a child and young teen, I grew up wanting to be a writer, and still want to be. In the past few years, my interests led me toward nonfiction, with a specific emphasis on books that explored the impact of technology on both an individual and societal level. In response to the volume of information available to us that technology has wrought (a subject of this book), the format in which I read has evolved from print to eBooks and, now, audio.
As technology moves from the realm of the visible to the invisible; embedded, pervasive programming that adds intelligence to even the most mundane objects and experiences — there will be an inevitable, ongoing conversation about the consequences, unintended or otherwise. That despite the unbounded trajectory of Technology power, Humans are also unbounded. Technology will keep taking ground but humans will keep taking the higher ground.
Here in ‘Where Will Man Take Us?’, Atul Jalan presents a wonderful mish-mash of thoughts, comparisons, personal experiences, and research. The book was so stuffed full of ideas and I devoured them eagerly. I’m compelled get up out of bed and write down some thoughts after finishing Where Will Man Take Us. I did a double-take when Atul Jalan wrote about Artificial Intelligence.
In ‘Where Will Man Take Us?’ Atul Jalan makes the case that the grand sweep and direction of technology shares parallels with evolutionary principles. This is a history and culture book as much as it’s a “technology” or futurism book. It’s one of the few books I’ve read in the last decade that really deserved to be a BOOK that commands your attention and requires immersive reading.
This book was not a monograph, but an opinion piece where one can feel the author’s knowledge and enthusiasm. It was like listening to the author’s monologue at a bar, nodding at times, raising an eyebrow at others, often scratching one’s head to develop some new thoughts on the topic of technology as the 7th kingdom of life. But for all the thoughtful reservations, ‘Where Will Man Take Us?’ is hugely positive. Probably author Atul Jalan’s years of research, and years of knowledge and experience before that, are here used to brilliant effect, to construct an ambitious intellectual framework through which to view the patterns and forces that shape technological change, together with the bigger scientific picture into which, Atul Jalan argues, technology fits.
The way you see the world is likely to change by the end, and if you’re not already immersed in the tech industry, then I guarantee you’ll be talking about and recommending it to others.
