The Immortalists

The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life

Immortalism is the new frontier of Silicon Valley. By harnessing technology to “cure” aging and investing in cutting-edge — and often controversial — research, today’s billionaires, from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman, are financing a new quest for eternal life: one they not only engineer, but also own and control.

There are entrepreneurs who regard humans as appliances to be fixed, and machines to be upgraded, transhumanists who want to upload consciousness to the cloud; and biohackers flogging AI-powered wellness apps. It’s a wild west of experimentation and outlandish ideologies, with the so-called science of immortalism carrying profound and dubious implications for all our social, ethical and political futures.

Award-winning journalist Aleks Krotoski journeys from the cult fringes to the technological heartlands, meeting the moguls, effective altruists, speculators and inventors who are disrupting death. This razor-sharp, powerful, and at times chilling investigation explores what it truly means to be human, asking: who really wants to live forever?

About Aleks Krotoski

Dr Aleks Krotoski is an award-winning international broadcaster, author and academic. She has topped the ratings for the BBC and Channel 4, winning Emmy, BAFTA, Radio Academy and Royal Society awards, and has written and presented landmark technology and social science series for both radio (with BBC Radio 4’s The Artificial Human and The Digital Human) and international television (with BBC World’s The Virtual Revolution). Krotoski has held fellowships at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. She currently teaches at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529948042
  • Price: £14.00
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