HUMANS 3.0 : The Upgrading of a Species

Peter Nowak's exciting new popular science book Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of a Species – a refreshingly optimistic look at the growing relationship between humans and technology.

Our species is entering a new era. Millions of years ago, we created tools to change our environment. Caves became huts, fires became ovens, and clubs became swords. Collectively these tools became technology, and the pace of innovation accelerated. Now we're applying the latest advancements to our own biology, and technology is becoming part of the process. But is that a good thing? Not if media scare pieces about government spying, limitless automation, and electronic addictions are to be believed. But veteran tech-writer Peter Nowak looks at what it means to be human – from the relationships we form and the beliefs we hold to the jobs we do and the objects we create – and measures the impact that those innovations have had and will have in the future. He shows not only how advancements in robotics, nanotechnology, neurology, and genetics are propelling us into a new epoch, but that they're improving us as a species. Nowak has compiled the data and traveled the world to speak to experts. Focusing on the effects of technology rather than just its comparatively minor side effects, he finds a world that is rapidly equalizing, globalizing, and co-operating. We've come a long way in the last four million years, but the best is yet to come. Welcome to Humans 3.0. PETER NOWAK has been writing about technology for 17 years and is currently a contributor and syndicated columnist/blogger for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Maclean's, Canadian Business and Yahoo Canada, as well as New Scientist magazine, and the BBC. His first book, Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Porn and Fast Food Created Technology As We Know It, was published in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Korea. In Canada, the book spent several weeks on the Macleans' best-seller list and received heavy media coverage. Internationally, the book also earned praise and coverage from the likes of The Guardian, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, ABC Radio in Australia and the New Zealand Herald. Over the course of his research for Humans 3.0, Peter traveled around the world to meet with individuals and specialists at the forefront of technological development. Throughout the book, he introduces us to venture capitalists in Israel, Buddhist monks and Samsung executives in South Korea, game developers in the UK, sociologists and "happiness officers" in Denmark, and inventors, executives and futurists in the Silicon Valley. Through their eyes, we come to see that individualism is exploding on a daily basis as we are experiencing groundbreaking technological growth, with expression in both artistic and commercial forms at an unprecedented high and aiming ever upward. Brilliantly narrated through Nowak's trademark pop-culture lens, Humans 3.0 contends that the combination of global collaboration and of growing self-actualization is the crux of the real improvement that will define the next phase of human evolution. The world is becoming a materially better place because of technology, and the human species is becoming qualitatively better because of it. Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of a Species is being published in early 2015 by Lyons Press in the US, and in spring 2015 by Goose Lane Editions in Canada.