Joel Garreau - Technology, the Future and Radical Evolution

According to Joel Garreau, Washington Post reporter and author of Radical Evolution, humans are at a precipitous turning point in history, one in which technology's awesome powers are being turned inward—upon ourselves—with the capability of changing the very substance of our minds, our bodies, and our progeny. In this talk, Garreau argues that we are undoubtedly the first species to attain such a remarkable level of control over our own evolution. But when the exponential rate of change in major technologies–genetic, robotic, informational and nanotech—is weighed against the near glacial rate of change in our social, religious, tribal, and national behaviors, how can we predict what perils await us as we assume the awesome power and responsibilities these technologies bring? In fifteen years' time will we find that we have created heaven—or hell? Join Garreau as he explores this wild yet completely plausible vision of our collective techno-destiny.

BIO

Joel Garreau is the author of Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies–and What It Means to Be Human, published in 2005 by Doubleday. Garreau burst onto the culture and values scene with the 1981 publication of The Nine Nations of North America, a book that described how the continent was behaving not so much like 50 states and three countries, but nine separate and powerful civilizations or economies that paid scant attention to political boundaries in the course of forging their own destiny. Ten years later, Garreau focused on who we are through the prism of the modern metropolis we are building in Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. In what was termed “groundbreaking” work by The New York Times, Garreau pointed out that we are building the biggest change in 150 years on how we live, work, play, pray, shop, and die.

Garreau is a reporter and editor at The Washington Post and principal of The Garreau Group, the network of his best sources committed to understanding who we are, how we got that way, and where we're headed, worldwide. He has served as a senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and George Mason University and is a member of Global Business Network, the pioneering scenario-planning organization. He is also the troll of a small forest in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains where he lives with his wife and two daughters.