Singularity.FM

I recorded this virtual keynote for a corporate client about 10 days ago and decided to share it publicly. Hope you enjoy it 😉 Technology is a Mirror, Not a Crystal Ball; It Reveals Who We Are, Not the Future The 1st atomic bomb was nicknamed “gadget.” Does this say something about […]

A few weeks ago, a client asked me to give a virtual keynote on futurism. The client was pretty happy with how it turned out, so I thought I’d share it publicly. This way, you can hopefully enjoy, share, and benefit from it too. 😉 How to Be a Futurist [Without Predicting the Future] […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 9: The Technology Story Technology improves the lives of people who can avoid being dominated by it and forced into debilitating addictions to it. Frank Kaufmann The 1st atomic bomb was nicknamed “gadget.” Does this fact say something […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 8: The Science Story The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Muriel Rukeyser *** About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 7: The Human Story The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Part II: Our Story Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse Before we have a story, any story, we must first have a storyteller. Therefore, the most important story, that which […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 6: The Biology of Story Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing the contrary that the mind is itself the principle element of creation. Rabindranath […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 5: The Importance of Story It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. Patrick Rothfuss Stories […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 4: The Power of the Storyteller The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. Steve Jobs. Before we have a […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 3: The Power of Story We suffer not from the events in our lives but from our stories about them. Epictetus The most powerful stories are stories about things that don’t exist. Because our fictive language gave birth […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 2: The Story of Story The limits of my language means the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein Humanity has searched for meaning since its beginning. And we find it in story. The story that we tell ourselves. […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Chapter 1: The Definition of Story We started our thought experiment with Kenneth Burke’s definition of story as “equipment for living.” Burke offers a great start but it is Jeff DeChambeau who really brings all the essential elements together […]

ReWriting the Human Story: How Our Story Determines Our Future an alternative thought experiment by Nikola Danaylov Part I: Story People always find it easier to be a result of the past rather than a cause of the future. Unknown Are we just billiard balls in a predetermined cosmic game of pool? Or are we free […]

It is harder and harder to make sense of life. Everything is changing, all the time, at a faster and faster pace. Our civilization is struggling to keep up with exponential technology and disruptive change. Our age-old institutions, politics, economics, ethics, religion and laws, even our environment, are so fundamentally challenged, that we risk collapse. […]

Dr. Gus Hosein is a 20+year-veteran of Privacy International. So to say that he knows a lot about privacy will be an understatement. But his knowledge is not merely academic. Gus and his scrappy team of privacy crusaders have fought the long and hard war while putting everything on the line, over and over again. […]

Though admittedly posthumanist, Francesca Ferrando‘s Philosophical Posthumanism is the best book on transhumanism that I have read so far. I believe that it is a must-read for transhumanists and non-transhumanists alike. In fact, one can argue that Ferrando’s book ranks right up there with the very best not only on the transhuman, but also on […]

Kim Stanley Robinson has an asteroid named after him. The reason for that is simple: Stan, as he’s often known among people who know him, is one of the best known contemporary authors of classic [hard] science fiction. He has written 20 books that have been translated into 25 languages and has won pretty much […]

Dr. Matthew Cole is the only vegan sociologist that I know of. His unique point of view on veganism, especially its implications with respect to ethics, transhumanism, and the application of technology, has already left a mark on the way I perceive the small challenges of being vegan as an opportunity for personal discipline and […]

Thomas Homer-Dixon is one of Canada’s most celebrated intellectuals. Luckily, he was also one of my Professors at the University of Toronto whose class on complexity has left an indelible mark on me. So when I heard that after a long break Homer-Dixon is publishing a new book on climate change I simply had to […]

Maria Farrell is the author of some of my most favorite op-ed pieces of 2020. She is very smart, gutsy, genuine, feisty, generous, and Irish. Her writing is sharper, it penetrates deeper and she’s not afraid to go further than most others. I have already learned a lot from her and have become a total […]

Glen Hiemstra has been a futurist for close to 40 years. But if you think his specialty is forecasting the future then you’d be wrong. No. Hiemstra’s focus has not been on the most probable, or even the possible future. Instead, Glen has chosen to focus consistently on what he calls “the preferred future.” This […]

Hans Moravec famously claimed that robots will be our (mind) children. If true, then, it is natural to wonder What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots? This is the question that Laura Major and Julie Shah – two expert robot engineers, are addressing in their new book. Given the subject of robots and AI as […]

Juan Enriquez is a bestselling author, TED All-Star with 9 TED Talks, and countless TEDx talks. Juan is an angel investor and Managing Director of Excel Venture Management. He has sailed around the world on an expedition that increased the number of known genes a hundredfold and was part of the peace commission that negotiated […]

Chris Hables Gray foresaw the current global pandemic in 2013 during our 1st interview, which has been perhaps the most undervalued conversation I have had on my podcast. But, despite the fact that he has not been as appreciated by the public as he deserves to be, I have always been a fan of his […]

Debora Spar is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School Online. Her research focuses on issues of gender and technology as well as the interplay between technological change and broader social structures. Prof. Spar tackles some of these issues in her recent book Work Mate […]

Melanie Mitchell is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University. Prof. Mitchell is the author of a number of interesting books such as Complexity: A Guided Tour and Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. One interesting detail of her academic bio is […]

Jenny Kleeman is a journalist who covers award-winning true stories in print, audio, and video. Most recently Kleeman is the author of a meticulously researched and extremely well-written book titled Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontiers of Birth, Food, Sex and Death. Given that birth, food, sex, and death encompass the human […]

Jacinta González is not an angel or venture capitalist. She is not a scientist or a technologist. She doesn’t have a Ph.D. in AI or quantum mechanics. She is not an entrepreneur who founded the next unicorn startup. Yet Jacinta’s decade-long first-hand experience of surveillance, and the system and technology that supports it, is as […]

Last month I did an interview for Johan Steyn. It was a great 45-min-conversation where we covered a variety of topics such as: the definition of the singularity; whether we are making progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); open vs closed systems; the importance of consciousness; my Amazon bestseller Conversations with the Future; how I […]

Renée Cummings is a criminologist, criminal psychologist, and an AI ethicist who, among other things, specializes in best-practice criminal justice interventions and implicit bias. Given the global Black Lives Matter movement and the fact that there have been numerous examples where technological solutions have been proven to exhibit a biased or even racist predisposition, I […]

Ada Palmer is a Professor in History researching the history of science, religion, progress, culture, and many other fascinating topics. She is also a science fiction author of the award-winning Terra Ignota series beginning with Too Like the Lightning, which explores a twenty-fifth civilization of voluntary citizenship and borderless nations. Now, this interview is over […]

Prof. Aaron Benanav has devoted his life to studying unemployment. Given that automation, technological unemployment, and universal basic income have become hot political and economic issues across the world, it was about time to have a podcast episode exclusively on those topics. I hope you enjoy it and learn as much from Aaron as I […]

Karl Schroeder is not only a great science fiction writer but also a professional futurist who has mastered both the art and science. I invited Schroeder back on my podcast for a brief discussion of foresight in the context of the on-going COVID19 global pandemic. If you have not seen our previous 2 interviews you can […]

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by James Bickerton of the Daily Express. We discussed transhumanism, the Singularity, AI, and the threats to democracy, among other things. Here is the description from James Bickerton’s YouTube channel: I interview Nikola Danaylov (@singularityblog), founder of the Singularity Weblog and author of Conversations with the Future: […]

Ada Palmer is a Professor in History researching the history of science, religion, progress, culture and many other fascinating topics. She is also a science fiction author of the award-winning Terra Ignota series beginning with Too Like the Lightning, which explores a twenty-fifth civilization of voluntary citizenship and borderless nations. During this 2h 45 min […]

I have previously interviewed a few fantastic scientists and philosophers but rare are those strange birds who manage to combine together both deep academic training and the living ethos of those separate disciplines. Prof. Massimo Pigliucci is one of those very rare and strange people. He has 3 Ph.D.’s – Genetics, Evolutionary Biology, and Philosophy, […]

People often ask me about my most favorite interview I have ever done. And my usual reply is that interviews are like children, even if we have our favorites it is not wise to express that outwardly because all kinds of problems will follow. And yet, after having published nearly 250 episodes of my podcast, […]

Two days ago I was interviewed by Jon Nielsen of the fantastic Happy Ways Podcast. During this 50 min interview with Jon Nielsen, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why the world is not upside down yet and what are the most productive attitudes towards the current COVID-19 crisis; why the journey […]

Dr. Ann Cavoukian was Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner for unprecedented 17 years and held the position during 3 different provincial governments. About 7 years ago, while still in office, I interviewed Ann Cavoukian on her original concept of Privacy by Design. [PbD] So if you haven’t seen it yet it may be best to start by […]

James W. Clement is a longevity researcher who was the 12th person on the planet to have his DNA sequenced. In 2010 James launched his Supercentenarian Research Study, which he started in 2010 with Professor George M. Church of Harvard Medical School. Since then Clement has read 20,000 medical research papers on longevity and has […]

This is the short closing speech I delivered at the 2019 Dark Futures meetup in Toronto. Not my finest speech but, since event organizer and futurist Nikolas Badminton kindly gave me a video of my keynote, I thought it may be good to share it publicly and get your critical feedback. Feel free to post […]

Dr. David Ferrucci is one of the few people who have created a benchmark in the history of AI because when IBM Watson won Jeopardy we reached a milestone many thought impossible. I was very privileged to have Ferrucci on my podcast in early 2012 when we spent an hour on Watson’s intricacies and importance. […]

Katy Cook‘s recent book the Psychology of Silicon Valley: Ethical Threats and Emotional Unintelligence in the Tech Industry is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the conflicting motivations, mythologies, identities and inherent tensions within Silicon Valley. It offers a unique understanding as per why we have seen the magic, manic and monstrous trajectory of […]

Cathy O’Neil is a math Ph. D. from Harvard and a data-scientist who hopes to someday have a better answer to the question, “what can a non-academic mathematician do that makes the world a better place?” In the meantime, she wrote a seminal book titled Weapons of Math Destruction: how big data increases inequality and […]

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the smartest species of them all?” “You, oh Homo Sapiens, are smart, it is true. But AI will be smarter even than you.” *** The most popular myth about technology is perhaps the myth that technology is a crystal ball. A crystal ball because it allegedly allows us to […]

It’s been 7 years since my first interview with Gary Marcus and I felt it’s time to catch up. Gary is the youngest Professor Emeritus at NYU and I wanted to get his contrarian views on the major things that have happened in AI as well as those that haven’t happened. Prof. Marcus is an […]

Prof. Steve Fuller is the author of 25 books including a trilogy relating to the idea of a ‘post-’ or ‘trans-‘ human future, and most recently, Nietzschean Meditations: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Age. He has an incredibly broad amount of knowledge from a diversity of disciplines and I have to admit […]

Cory Doctorow is probably my all time most favorite science fiction writer. The reason for that is simple – Doctorow is not only a great story-teller but also an activist. To paraphrase Karl Marx, writers have tried to capture and describe the world but the point, however, is to change it. And Cory is a […]

Tristan Harris is one of my heroes. And I don’t know about you but I am much more demanding and harder on my heroes. I just expect them to hold themselves to a higher standard, to know more, to do more, to be more and, perhaps most of all, to live and breathe their own […]

I first met Andreas Antonopoulos at the 2014 Bitcoin Expo conference in Toronto, Canada. At that time Andreas was already established as the most publicly recognized expert in the field of crypto-currency, not in the least due to his impressive capacity to take the geek out of bitcoin and make it relevant to and understandable […]