What if death, disease, and even biology itself were just problems waiting to be solved..? Futurist, thinker and inventor Ray Kurzweil thinks they are - and he’s built a career predicting the moment when humans and machines will merge.

In this episode, I have a mull about Kurzweil's key works, especiallyThe Singularity Is Near (2005) and its 2024 sequel The Singularity Is Nearer. Kurzweil claims that AI will match human intelligence by the end of the 2020s, and by mid- 2040s we’ll hit the “Singularity” - a point where exponential growth in AI, biotech, and nanotech transforms human life forever. Think radical life extension, brain–computer interfaces, and even digital immortality.

Kurzweil calls it progress. Critics call it techno-utopianism, even a kind of secular faith. In this audio essay, I discuss mind-uploading, overcoming death, whether AI is really “intelligent,” or just good at pattern recognition? Kurzweil’s vision is part science, part prophecy. Whether you find him inspiring or unsettling, his ideas force us to confront the future of intelligence, identity, and what it means to be human in a world remade by technology.

With thanks to Tristen Nunes -editing, research and post-production.

In this episode, I return to Alan Turing’s 1950 essay in Mind "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" – a foundational text in the history of artificial intelligence, but also one that is far stranger, more playful, and more haunting than we might anticipates. This is the essay where Turing famously asks, "Can machines think?" But rather than define thinking, he proposes a game - the Imitation Game[The Turing Test] - a conversational test designed not to reveal intelligence as an inner property, but as something enacted, judged, and performed in dialogue. We explore how this seemingly simple setup unsettles traditional metaphysical assumptions about the mind. On my re-reading I didn’t find a cold piece of determinism, it contains moments of humour, wonder, and a surprising detour into telepathy - a bizarre and often forgotten detail. What emerges is a vision of intelligence not as a static essence, but as a kind of performance -something that must be continually enacted and recognised by others.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

On this episode I take a fresh look at how we think about technology by exploring David Edgerton’s old but updated book The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Rather than celebrating the latest inventions as revolutionary breakthroughs, Edgerton argues that we should pay closer attention to the technologies that persist - those that are used, maintained, repaired andadapted over time. I reflect on the difference between invention and use, the purpose of repair, and how technologies often remain central to daily life long after they’re considered outdated, and this persistence tells us about their real impact. Also, we pose some questions for Martin Heidegger's theory of technology too.

To get a sense of Edgerton's work you can visit his website here, or you can listen to an interview with him here on the Zukunft Denken Podcast which should give you a good summary of his central preoccupations. It was this article from the Manchester Mill that got me thinking about all this.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

In this wide-ranging conversation, I met with acclaimed literary theorist, philosopher and technology scholar N. Katherine Hayles, whose pioneering work has reshaped how we understand the boundaries between humans and machines, cognition and computation, biology and code, artificial intelligence and artificial life. We primarily discussed Katherine's new book Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts. We also discuss elements of Hayles' other works such as How We Became Posthuman and Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious. Hayles has long argued that cognition is not the exclusive domain of conscious, rational minds. In her work, cognition is distributed, embodied, and extended across human, nonhuman, and technical systems. In this chat we explore what it means to take that seriously in a moment when large language models (LLMs), AI, and synthetic biology are reconfiguring the nature of agency and intelligence.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

In this episode I have a think about maverick scientist James Lovelock and his ideas about Gaia, artificial intelligence and his predictions about the coming age of hyper-intelligent machine.

f you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

The Novels of William Gibson William Gibson is a pioneering science fiction novelist. He is most renowned as one of the great cyberpunk novelists as well as for for coining the term "cyberspace" in his debut novel, Neuromancer (1984). His work explores the intersection of technology, society, and human identity, anticipating the rise of the internet and virtual reality. With a cyberpunk aesthetic. In this audio essay I talk about all, and I talk why Gibson is so interesting for understanding how the technological self would be an absurd admixture of certainty and uncertainty. Also, why we enjoy our own downfall.

The article from the New Yorker I refer to can be found here.

If you would like to study with me you can find more information about our online education MAs in Philosophy here at Staffordshire University. You can find out more information on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. September intakes F/T or January intakes P/T. You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Pod Bean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review.

In this audio essay I think about the ecological musings of Pope Francis from his encyclical letters Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home and Laudato Si: On theClimate Crisis. Generally, I try to figure out what the pope’s theory oftechnology is. Pope Francis is an advocate for environmental stewardship and he emphasizes the moral imperative of addressing climate change, environmental degradation and stressing the interconnectedness of all life. In the end I wonder if he is more of a transhumanist with his commitment to radical life extension.

On this audio essay I have a good mull about the value of ethics for thinking about the environment. I discuss the limits and benefits of conventional forms of Practical Ethics and Environmental ethics, the limits of moral agency, how to connect ethics to technology. The following thinkers and writers come up –Donna Haraway, Arne Naess, Peter Singer, Aldo Leopold, David Wallace-Wells. Building on Haraway and Naess interdisciplinary approach I try to figure out what a “deep tech” might look like, that is to say, how can we think of science and technology as truly connected to concrete things we do in everyday life. In other words, how do we make the future real, again.