Program or Be Programmed

A New Edition of my 2010 Book, Updated for the Digital Age

As a way of celebrating and introducing the brand new edition of my book Program or Be Programmed, the brilliant cultural analyst Matt Klein and I will be doing a livestream conversation/virtual book launch about whether and how human values and creativity can thrive in the increasingly programmed and automated landscape ahead. (The answer is: yes, by learning to distinguish human agency from programmed behaviors and living values from digital metrics!)

I will also be sharing my “four interventions” for programming reality — an approach to social change that focuses on creating conditions that engender human flourishing instead of “getting people” to do one thing or another.

Please come! It’s online, free, and all you have to do is register at this link.

For you, Medium’s paying subscribers, I’ll be posting some of the the new chapters of the book right here. First up, a short chapter called AI: Value the Human

XI. AI

Value the Human

“First they came for the cab drivers, and I said nothing because I am not a cab driver . . . ”

Most people who fear artificial intelligence are simply afraid for their jobs. While earlier…