The End of Life as We Know It
Ominous News from the Frontiers of Science
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Narrated by:
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Michael Guillen PhD
About this listen
In nearly all aspects of life, humans are crossing lines of no return.
Modern science is leading us into vast uncharted territory - far beyond the invention of nuclear weapons or taking us to the moon. Today, in labs all over the world, scientists are performing experiments that threaten to fundamentally alter the practical character and ethical color of our everyday lives.
In The End of Life as We Know It, best-selling author Michael Guillen takes a penetrating look at how the scientific community is pushing the boundaries of morality, including:
- Scientists who detached the head of a Russian man from his crippled, diseased body and stitched it onto a healthy new donated body
- Fertility experiments aimed at allowing designer babies to be conceived with the DNA from three or more biological parents
- The unprecedented politicization of science - for example, in the global discussion about climate change that is pitting "deniers" against "alarmists" and inspiring Draconian legislation, censorship, and legal prosecutions
- The integration of artificial Intelligence into communications and the economy
The End of Life as We Know It takes us into laboratories and boardrooms where these troubling advances are taking place and asks the question no scientists seem to be asking: What does this mean for the future of humanity?
©2018 Michael Guillen, PhD (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
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Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
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Data-ism
- The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else
- By: Steve Lohr
- Narrated by: Steve Lohr
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Coal, iron ore, and oil were the key productive assets that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Today data is the vital raw material of the information economy. The explosive abundance of this digital asset, more than doubling every two years, is creating a new world of opportunity and challenge. Data-ism is about this next phase, in which vast, Internet-scale data sets are used for discovery and prediction in virtually every field. It is a journey across this emerging world with people, illuminating narrative examples, and insights.
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More business case than serious analysis
- By Godfried Gubbels on 06-03-15
By: Steve Lohr
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The Science of Fear
- Why We Fear the Things We Should Not - and Put Ourselves in Great Danger
- By: Daniel Gardner
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From terror attacks to the War on Terror, bursting real-estate bubbles to crystal meth epidemics, sexual predators to poisonous toys from China, our list of fears seems to be exploding. And yet, we are the safest and healthiest humans in history. Irrational fear is running amok, and often with tragic results. In the months after 9/11, when people decided to drive instead of fly - believing they were avoiding risk - road deaths rose by 1,595. Those lives were lost to fear.
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A rational assessment of the world we live in
- By K Head on 08-29-09
By: Daniel Gardner
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Program or Be Programmed
- Ten Commands for a Digital Age
- By: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In 10 chapters, composed of 10 "commands", Rushkoff provides cyber enthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate the digital new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping listeners to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age - and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries.
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Good book, but with some crazy ranting
- By Bjarne on 02-05-15
By: Douglas Rushkoff
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Technically Wrong
- Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
- By: Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- Narrated by: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Buying groceries, tracking our health, finding a date: whatever we want to do, odds are that we can now do it online. But few of us ask how all these digital products are designed, or why. It's time we change that. Many of the services we rely on are full of oversights, biases, and downright ethical nightmares. Chatbots that harass women. Signup forms that fail anyone who's not straight. Social media sites that send peppy messages about dead relatives. Algorithms that put more black people behind bars.
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Pretty good but not complete
- By Casey on 10-29-17
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Virus of the Mind
- The New Science of the Meme
- By: Richard Brodie
- Narrated by: Richard Brodie
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Virus of the Mind is the first popular work devoted to the science of memetics, a controversial new field that transcends psychology, biology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Memetics is the science of memes, the invisible but very real DNA of human society. Here, the author carefully builds on the work of scientists Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, and others who have become fascinated with memes and their potential impact on our lives.
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The "Memes Explain Everything" Meme.
- By Nelson Alexander on 02-20-10
By: Richard Brodie
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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Sapiens
- A Brief History of Humankind
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
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Should be required reading
- By Blue Zion on 12-22-18
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Broad Band
- The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
- By: Claire L. Evans
- Narrated by: Claire L. Evans
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize. Vice reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the Internet what it is today. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.
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Inspiring
- By Jean on 03-29-18
By: Claire L. Evans
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World Without Mind
- The Existential Threat of Big Tech
- By: Franklin Foer
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon, socialize on Facebook, turn to Apple for entertainment, and rely on Google for information.
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5-Star Book with a 1-Star Title
- By David Larson on 09-18-17
By: Franklin Foer
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The Mobile Wave
- How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything
- By: Michael Saylor
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mobile Wave argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, even though we are all immersed in it. Saylor explains that the current generation of mobile smart phones and tablet computers has set the stage to become the universal computing platform for the world. In the hands of billions of people and accessible anywhere and anytime, mobile computers are poised to become an appendage of the human being and an essential tool for modern life.
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Commonplace knowledge peppered with buzzwords
- By Amazon Customer on 10-22-13
By: Michael Saylor
What listeners say about The End of Life as We Know It
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- RGB
- 09-21-20
Good until the end, where it feels like a sermon
I liked this book until the end, where the author discusses his views on religion and it’s superiority to secularism. While he is certainly entitled to his opinion it felt like an overt attempt to challenge the evidence-minded audience likely to be drawn to this book.
The author seems to think secularists have subscribed to an alternate faith called scientism, but that accusation misunderstands the entire point. Science doesn’t require faith, it instead seeks to understand the cosmos through experimentation and evidence. Religion claims to already understand the cosmos but requires, and reveres, without evidence.
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2 people found this helpful
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- MyName
- 01-20-21
😳😓😅🤣😂😇
I HAVE BARELY BEGUN TO LISTEN TO THIS AUDIOBOOK AND SCARY- YES. BUT I HAD TO LEAVE A REVIEW ALREADY....... I AM SO VERY THANKFUL THAT I HAVEN’T HAD A TV IN YEARS: ABSOLUTELY BY CHOICE. I DON’T DO FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM OR ANY OTHER APP SUCH AS THE LIKES OF THOSE. WHEN I LEAVE MY HOUSE, MY IPHONE XR STAYS IN THE HOUSE- I NEVER TAKE IT WITH ME, NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT- JUST NEVER BROUGHT IT WITH ME. GUESS THAT TAKES CARE OF GPS AND MY MOVEMENTS AND WHEREABOUTS, HUH?
IF MY PHONE REALLY WANTS TO LISTEN TO ME: IT HEARS A LOT OF ME TALKING TO MY LORD JESUS CHRIST. AMEN.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Robert M. Conway
- 05-21-23
Changes we all should be aware of…
We’ll written and narrated. An excellent message from the future ,which is already
At our doorstep.
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- stereotypo
- 11-01-20
The title is an inevitability.
A good exposé of how, through scientific and technologic advancement, man is outdoing himself, and, perhaps, undoing himself.
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1 person found this helpful
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- BBWrighter
- 09-25-22
Good information to get you thinking
This way interesting reading and certainly got me thinking, But the ending is way too preachy, too opinionated.
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- Neda
- 11-05-22
Informative
I enjoyed the book, made me aware of things I never would have thought about. We as a species will be our own destruction .
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- Anna S
- 12-28-18
A must read for us all
Absolutely loved the content but the reader was choppy. Will most definitely listen to again.
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- Aubert King
- 08-03-19
.
What an eye (ear) opening experience. Dr Guillen covers the gammit of thought and impact of technology on mankind.
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- Blakely Jones
- 09-21-20
Worth a listen even if it becomes illogical
Great book, wonderful presentation.
However the end provides a pro-religious argument without base and the claim that science it's somehow an illogical belief. "the belief that what is objective is what exists." and that's kind of silly.
by that same argument we could say that invisible pirates control physics of the world and that would be a valid view of how things work. we know better.
but all in all a great book.
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- Ron
- 01-19-19
Great eyeopener and a wakeup call for humanity
i think the content is well researched and informative. Hope it serves the purpose in making the audiance question what it means to allow future to stop making moral an ethical sense.
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