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Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine (Hardback)
Harry Parker (author)Published: 17/02/2022
Drawing from both his own personal experience and wide-ranging investigation into many other forms of interaction between biology and technology, Parker delivers a highly entertaining and eye-opening account of how robotics, computing and AI might be about to irrevocably alter our understanding of what it means to be human.
Is your mobile phone thinking for you? Do your rely more on Google than your own memory? Harry Parker's life changed overnight, when he lost his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. That took him into an often surprising landscape of a very human kind of hacking, and he wondered, are all humans hybrids?
Whether it's putting on contact lenses every day or DIY biohackers tinkering in garages, Parker introduces us to the exhilarating breadth of human invention - and intervention. Grappling with his own new identity and disability, he discovers the latest robotics, tech and implants that might lead us to powerful, liberating possibilities for what a body can be.
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781788163101
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 336 g
Dimensions: 200 x 134 x 24 mm
Edition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
I loved Hybrid Humans. It is modest, wise ... and a way of looking at the future without nostalgia for the past - Jeanette Winterson
Harry Parker has explored the cutting edge of interaction between humanity, computing and AI ... a captivating and cautionary travel guide to a new world - Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being
Fascinating ... Parker's writing is elegant and often lyrical ... As someone who has lived as a "hybrid" for more than a decade, Parker never forgets the realities of everyday life, which encompass both pain and beauty. This may be a tour of the scientific avant garde, but the focus is always on the human heart and mind - David Robson, Book of the Day, Observer
A terrific writer - Elizabeth Day
Absorbing ... Parker takes us on a tour of the weird and wonderful world where man and machine meet - Daily Mail
Praise for Anatomy of a Soldier: 'Marvellously told' - Alan Bennett
Alive to every nuance of feeling - Hilary Mantel
A brilliant book - Edna O'Brien
Beautifully constructed and moving - Val McDermid
A tour de force - Nadeem Aslam
Compassionate and compelling - Kate Hamer
An endless ability to surprise - Phil Klay
Harry Parker Interview
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