THE WAY OF DEEP TIME

Since the emergence of human consciousness, we have believed that we are special. We needed to believe this. We made lists of things that set us apart from other living things.

Souls

Emotions

Free will

Moral reasoning

Language

Tools

Self-awareness

Intelligence

One by one our preeminence over animals was shown to be an illusion. And then AI arrived.

Even as computers surpass us, we persist in believing that machines can never match us, that some constantly updating mark of specialness will always set us apart. What if the only thing special about us is our egos?

The Way of Deep Time is a fictional universe set in the near future. In stories and novels I explore how greed, hubris, and the rush to get to the future first creates strange but not strange enough world economy based on status and power. I lay out a society in which the desire for superhuman intelligence cripples generations of children. Most importantly, I imagine a future in which humans discover that what makes us special is that we are, after all, animals.