This is a big day – after 18 months of intense writing and crafting, my new book is finally ready to be published on September 8, 2016. I have teamed up with fellow futurist Rohit Talwar’s new publishing company Fast Future Publishing and today I am delighted to announce the availability of a pre-publication test-read on our new website at www.techvshuman.com. You can read the introduction as well as the entire first chapter online, effective immediately, free of charge, of course:) Below is a snippet about the new book – in many ways, this book is the pinnacle of my work during the past 10 years:)
Please help us get the word out about this book and make it onto the sales charts: read the first chapter and if you enjoy it please share this announcement via social media, as widely as you can. Thanks!
UPDATE: read this exclusive preview PDF: Technology-vs.-Humanity-Gerd Leonhard Preview
You can now pre-order the ebook / Kindle version via Amazon.com or .uk ($9.99 pre-order price) or directly via the publisher (better for us!) who will also offer the print/dead-tree version after September 8 2015!
Which side are you on? Gerd Leonhard’s provocative new manifesto
“Are you ready for the greatest changes in recent human history? Futurism meets humanism in Gerd Leonhard’s ground-breaking new work of critical observation, discussing the multiple Megashifts that will radically alter not just our society and economy but our values and our biology. Wherever you stand on the scale between technomania and nostalgia for a lost world, this is a book to challenge, provoke, warn and inspire.
From two decades of traveling the world and speaking about future scenarios across many industries and cultures, Futurist Gerd Leonhard has acquired unique foresights and intuition into where the world is rapidly going. As technology develops at an exponential pace and redefines the way we work, live and even think, he explores the myriad unasked questions we should have been posing some time ago. If you are a business leader, an institutional decision maker, a professional in any industry or simply a curious and aware individual, this book challenges and inspires you to take stock and rethink your humanity in the post-human world.
Technology vs. Humanity is a last-minute wake up call to take part in the most important conversation humanity may ever have. Will we blindly outsource and abdicate big chunks of our lives to the global technology companies – or will we take back our autonomy and demand a sustainable balance between technology and humanity? By supplying a Socratic and humanistic critique of the Megashifts currently recasting our world, Gerd Leonhard provides the prologue for this great debate. Now is the time to join the dots between big data and digital ethics, to start discussing the moral framework required to steer the evolution of digital life – and to finally articulate the difference between our unique humanity and the rapidly evolving robotic versions. In 1949 George Orwell released Nineteen Eighty-Four – offering us a stark warning of a world dominated by technology and those who own and control it. Nearly seventy years after its publication, Gerd Leonhard investigates how we preserve our humanity in a world that is rapidly beginning to resemble that science fiction.”
Also, I just received some pretty fantastic early praise from some amazing people that have already reviewed an early edition of the book- this is what they have to say:
“A brave manifesto for a more human world.” –Andrew Keen, author of The Internet is not the answer
“Gerd Leonhard is most definitely a member of Team Human. Here’s his convincing and heartfelt call for the reinstatement of people and purpose into the technology program.” – Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus and host of the TeamHuman podcast
“Gerd Leonhard provides a fascinating look at the impact of exponential technologies and the dilemmas we will face in adapting to—or being adapted by—these. His book really makes you worry—and think.” –Videk Wadhwa, distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon, academic, researcher, entrepreneur, and author of Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology
“Gerd Leonhard zeroes in on some of the most vexing worries about our coming age of mechanically-enhanced thought. Are there “win-win” ways to gain the advantages without sacrificing our humanity? Can we bio-minds teach the newer kind ethics? Or love?” –David Brin, award-wining author of Earth and Existence
“Our world is transforming at breakneck pace. Gerd is raising the central most important question of the century: what will our ethics be? His book can help us choose the path of a beautiful and rich future and avoid the path where that future—by virtue of billions of unconscious non-decisions—has impoverished our lives beyond repair.” –Albhy Galuten, futurist, strategic technologist, Grammy Award-winning record producer, inventor
Watch my short film on this topic, below
