Well, we can always dream, can't we? The book shown above, which I have not read, was reviewed in the September 11, 2025, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The book review takes seriously the idea that a technological uptopia may soon be coming down the line, and forecasts that computers implanted in our brains will be part of the utopian package. The Wall Street Journal explored that theme in an earlier article, too.
We can, as The Journal seems to be doing, "dream on," but the line that pops for me is from Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues." You may remember the exchange that Bob had with his doctor:
Some time ago a crazy dream came to me
I dreamt I was walkin’ into World War Three
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say
He said it was a bad dream
I am definitely of the opinion that the "techno-optimist" future described by Amir Hussain, in his recent book, and in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, is one of those "bad dreams." Maybe it's just me, but how does this sound to you?
If predictions about the impact of artificial intelligence pan out, the world of 100 or even 50 years hence may prove beyond our comprehension. AI systems will have taken over many or most of the functions currently performed by humans. Companies will be led by AI chief executives. New cities will fuse “human cognition and ingenuity with the power of artificial intelligence.” Wired with an internal “neural lace,” our brains will telepathically connect us to AI supersystems, creating a synthesis in which the line between human and machine is “blurred beyond recognition.”
Some may be questing after a future in which we will transform ourselves into appendages to our own, human-created machinery. Personally, I am running in the opposite direction.
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