To Be a Machine Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

Winner of the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize
Shortlisted for the 2017 Baillie-Gifford Prize for Nonfiction
Finalist for the 2017 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize

"Troubling and humorous, this is one of my current give-it-to-everyone books-I buy six copies at a time. Did you know our future belongs to a few asocial geeks for whom being human has always been a problem? Now they can solve it!"
-Jeanette Winterson, Vulture

"O'Connell... dissects the practices and beliefs of trans-humanism with extraordinary exuberance and wit... To Be a Machine is sometimes hilarious (triggering several bursts of uncontrollable giggles while I read it on the Tube) but even as O'Connell mocks the more absurd manifestations of trans-humanism he shows sympathy and understanding for its adherents."
-Financial Times

"Wryly humorous, cogently insightful.... To Be a Machine is a lucid, soulful pilgrimage into the heart of what humanity means to us now-and how science may redefine it tomorrow, for better and for worse."
-NPR.org

"Open-minded... With a practiced journalist's sense of engagement and empathy leavened by healthy skepticism, O'Connell describes the peculiar constellation of scientists, seekers, grifters, and con artists orbiting techno-optimist communities over the past half century.... Offer[s] much-needed critical analysis that never veers into condescension."
-LA Review of Books

"O'Connell unleashes his prodigious researching and writing skills on what could be your future."
-Philadelphia Inquirer

"O'Connell is a writer of elegant precision and winning facetiousness... His ear and eye for detail are prodigious... O'Connell's writing-full of high-low swerves and personal asides-is a constant reminder of the bathetic reality of being human."
-4Columns

"[O'Connell] reveals a bounty of beguiling ingenuity and genuine absurdity, eliciting laughs and empathy, because we are our most human while trying to become something more than human."
-Playboy

"O'Connell, a columnist for Slate, is a charming, funny tour guide. Writing on transhumanism often gets swept away by the inherent drama of its adherents' promises, but O'Connell's eye for small human details...keeps the narrative grounded in a way that rigorous scientific debunking wouldn't."
-Vice

"The game-changing technology being developed in Silicon Valley is often hard to wrap one's head around, and Mark O'Connell takes readers on a wild ride through this world in a way that makes one feel that anything is possible and everything is happening right now."
-Newsweek

"In this thoughtful and readable book, [O'Connell] aims to understand the motivations of those who are guided by the belief that technology will enable humans to transcend the human condition. In an attempt to explore what it means to think of ourselves as machines, O'Connell takes readers on an all-encompassing tour...He writes in an agreeable, conversational tone, offering his opinions, doubts, and fears along the way."
-Undark

"O'Connell decides to dive into the transhumanist culture in the best way possible: by traveling the world in search of key figures in the movement... The result is a fast-paced travel-log-cum-existential inquiry into the science and the religious significance of this age-old human desire to live forever: To become, in effect, a god."
-NPR's 13.7 blog

"O'Connell, a journalist, makes his own prejudices clear: 'I am not now, nor have I ever been, a transhumanist,' he writes. However, this does not stop him from thoughtfully surveying the movement."
-Science

"O'Connell's book is skeptical but not cynical, and it functions as a witty overview of transhumanism."
-The Ringer

"O'Connell's sensibility-his humanity, if you will-and his subject matter are a match made in heaven. It's an absolutely wonderful book."
-The Millions

"O'Connell has devised an indispensable GPS for negotiating today's tomorrow-land."
-Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

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