Re-Engineering Humanity

Brett Frischmann is the Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics, at Villanova University. He is also an affiliated scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, and a trustee for the Nexa Center for Internet and Society, Politecnico di Torino. He has published foundational books on the relationships between infrastructural resources, governance, commons, and spillovers, including Governing Medical Knowledge Commons, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg (Cambridge, 2017); Governing Knowledge Commons, with Michael Madison and Katherine Strandburg (2014); and Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (2012). Evan Selinger is Professor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he is also the Head of Research Communications, Community, and Ethics at the Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction, and Creativity. A Senior Fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum, his primary research is on the ethical and privacy dimensions of emerging technology. Selinger has co-edited The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy, with Jules Polontesky and Omer Tene (Cambridge, 2018). A strong advocate of public philosophy, he regularly writes for magazines, newspapers, and blogs, including the Guardian, The Atlantic, Slate, and Wired.

'Frischmann and Selinger provide a thoroughgoing and balanced examination of the tradeoffs inherent in offloading tasks and decisions to computers. By illuminating these often intricate and hidden tradeoffs, and providing a practical framework for assessing and negotiating them, the authors give us the power to make wiser choices.' Nicolas Carr, author of The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us, from the Foreword

• Foreword Nicholas Carr; Introduction; Part I: 1. Engineering humans; 2. Cogs in the machine of our own lives; 3. Techno-social engineering creep and the slippery-sloped path; Part II: 4. Tools for engineering humans; 5. Engineering humans with contracts; 6. On extending minds and mind control; 7. The path to smart techno-social environments; 8. Techno-social engineering of humans through smart environments; 9. #RelationshipOptimization; Part III: 10. Turing tests and the line between humans and machines; 11. Can humans be engineered to be incapable of thinking?; 12. Engineered determinism and free will; 13. To what end?; Part IV: 14. Conclusion: reimagining and building alternative futures.