Our world is an utterly artificial one, created by humans, for humans. From domesticated wheat fields to nuclear power plants and spacecraft, everything we see and interact with has in some way been altered by the presence of our species, starting from the Neolithic revolution so many centuries ago.This book provides a crash course on the ongoing debate surrounding technology’s shifting place in our society. It covers the history of our increasingly black-box world, which some theorize will end with a “singularity”—a point in which technology accelerates beyond the understanding of modern humans. At the same time, it analyzes competing trends and theories: the so-called “scientific illiteracy” of large sections of the population, the dogmas of pseudoscience, and the growing suspicion of science and technology, which may inevitably lead to scientific stagnation.What will the future of our civilization look like? How fast might scientific acceleration or stagnation arrive at our doorstep, and just how radically will such technological shifts change our culture? These possibilities and more are explored in this book in a straightforward and nontechnical manner.  weiterlesen