Dr. Michael D.B. Harvey | The age of humachines: Why Big Tech and its machine mindset could be leading us to ecologically-ravaged techno-dystopia | 26 Feb 2025 at 13:30 ET | CACOR Live

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Speaker: Dr. Michael D.B. Harvey

Topic: The age of humachines: Why Big Tech and its machine mindset could be leading us to ecologically-ravaged techno-dystopia

Time: Feb 26, 2025 at 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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Summary:

In The Age of Humachines I argue that capitalism has embarked on a reckless new phase of all-out automation and human–machine fusion which intends to transform everything about being human on planet Earth. In this way, Big Tech aims to square the circle of infinite economic growth on a finite planet, but its green credentials are deeply flawed, as I will show. Politically, tech billionaires are increasingly favouring the hard right – witness Elon Musk’s alliance with Donald Trump –which compounds the undermining of democracy by social media and other communicative technologies this century. All of this points to an increasingly dystopian political future in which current predictions of 3C global warming by 2100 are realized, making our planet increasingly uninhabitable for billions.

The problem is not necessarily technology itself but the “machine mindset” behind the Big Tech concept of science, which regards physics as superior to biology. It exhibits a mechanistic dominator complex, lacking in empathy, and an aggressively masculinist obsession with mastering nature. This anti-social and anti-democratic personality type needs to be changed through new democratic and psychological processes if the prospect of a sustainable and equitable human future is to be kept alive.

Biography:

Michael D.B. Harvey is a London-based organizational psychologist and writer. In the 1980s he was an entrepreneur in high-tech innovation, pioneering online, interactive services which the internet would eventually turn into mainstream activities. In the early 1990s, disappointed with the capacity of new technology to ameliorate human behaviour, he trained as a psychotherapist and organizational psychologist and since then has worked with many leading organizations across Europe.

He has degrees in English Literature, Sociology, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Organizational Psychology. His books include Interactional Leadership and Utopia in the Anthropocene: A change plan for a sustainable and equitable world (Routledge, 2019).

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