Re-engineering humans and rethinking digital networked tools - Prof. Brett Frischmann

Re-engineering humans and rethinking digital networked tools. "We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." -  (John Culkin, 1967) Introduction

Since Prometheus' gift of fire to humankind, humans have been using it as a tool to adapt to their environment and ultimately adapt the environment to themselves. Yet, from contract law, to media, to the roads we create, human beings have also always been shaped by their very own tools. A set of foreseen and unforeseen consequences on the way people develop, learn, interact, or build relationships tend to manifest with ubiquitous tools. This is a rather obvious observation but an important one to make in order to contextualise the way that modern digital networked tools have affected people in the information age.

In this month’s AGI podcast, we were honored to receive and converse with Professor Brett Frischmann who recently wrote, along with his colleague Professor Evan Selinger, the book Re-Engineering Humanity joined. Much of the podcast’s discussion touches on subjects that the book covers in-depth and with a refreshing level of optimism despite the harsh reality it unveils.

The guest, Brett Frischmann, is the Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics at Villanova University. He is also an Affiliate Scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and a Trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet & Society in Torino, Italy. More importantly, Prof. Frischmann has researched extensively on knowledge commons, the Social Value of Shared Resources and techno-social engineering of humans (the relationships between the techno-social world and humanity). These subjects have long been core to the vision of SingularityNET and it was an exciting opportunity to discuss them with such a knowledgeable guest.