Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

by Hannah Fry

Because the future doesn’t just happen. We create it.

That was the deal that we made. Free technology in return for your data and the ability to use it to influence and profit from you. The best and worst of capitalism in one simple swap.

Generally, it isn’t considered wise to encourage a car to drive up a tree.

Build a machine to improve human performance, she explained, and it will lead – ironically – to a reduction in human ability.

But even if all drivers manage to stay competentfn4 (allowing for generous interpretation of the word ‘stay’),

just maybe – there are some things that lie beyond the scope of the dispassionate machine.

Among all of the staggeringly impressive, mind-boggling things that data and statistics can tell me, how it feels to be human isn’t one of them.

In the age of the algorithm, humans have never been more important.