“This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies—our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans—in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something better than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley billionaires and some of the world’s biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implanting electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meets a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mankind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession with technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the technologies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressing these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, often laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In investigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.

A pioneering study of the relations between gender and technology.

Everything men (and women) should know about male sexual equipment - what it does, how it works and how to keep it healthy.

"Diversity" has become the turn-of-the-century buzzword. Republican and Democratic leaders ritually chant "diversity is our strength" and corporate CEOs talk about the need to create a "workforce that looks like America." Most corporate mission statements now contain a clause on "valuing differences" and millions of employees have completed-or soon will undergo-some sort of "diversity training." Where did all this come from -and why? Who created diversity programs? How do they differ? How effective are these policies? Can they do more harm than good in organizations and in the wider society?During the past decade, sociologist Frederick R. Lynch studied the rise of a social policy movement that has successfully moved multiculturalism from universities and foundations into the courts, mass media, and the American workplace. The new diversity policies are future-oriented and market-driven, eclipsing "old" affirmative action debates about overcoming past discrimination against blacks.Based on more than six years of field research and hundreds of interviews, Lynch tracks the development and impact of different forms of diversity policies at dozens of consultant gatherings, in the business and professional literature and through in-depth case studies such as the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He profiles the major consultants who have powered the diversity machine, analyzes the benefits and drawbacks of various approaches to workplace diversity and provides numerous "you-are-there" samples of workshops, seminars, and conferences.The book is written for the general reader interested in public-policy issues, social scientists, and others interested in the origins and consequences of workplace diversity policies.

A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.

Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God. Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle’s fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.