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Move Slow and Upgrade
  • The Power of Incremental Innovation
  • Evan Selinger, Albert Fox Cahn
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    05 February 2026
  • For far too long, tech titans peddled promises of disruptive innovation - fabricating benefits and minimizing harms. The promise of quick and easy fixes overpowered a growing chorus of critical voices, driving a sea of private and public investments into increasingly dangerous, misguided, and doomed forms of disruption, with the public paying the price. But what's the alternative? Upgrades - evidence-based, incremental change. Instead of continuing to invest in untested, high-risk innovations, constantly chasing outsized returns, upgraders seek a more proven path to proportional progress. This book dives deep into some of the most disastrous innovations of recent years - the metaverse, cryptocurrency, home surveillance, and AI, to name a few - while highlighting some of the unsung upgraders pushing real progress each day. Timely and corrective, Move Slow and Upgrade pushes us past the baseless promises of innovation, towards realistic hope.

  • 7 - Why a Commitment to Pluralism Should Limit How Humanity Is Re-Engineered

  • from Part III - Humanity
  • Edited by Kevin Werbach
  • Book:
    After the Digital Tornado
    Published online:
    24 August 2020
    Print publication:
    23 July 2020, pp 155-173
    • Chapter
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      • Open access
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  • Summary

    Networked digital systems are engaged in no less than the re-engineering of humanity. While the narrative of artificial intelligence for many decades has been about computers becoming more like people, the reverse is also occurring: People are effectively being turned into machines. Promoting human flourishing means allowing for different conceptions of the good life. That means pushing back on the reductionist systems that private companies engineer for their own interests, and respecting the right to turn off. Robert Nozick’s classic thought experiment of a machine that can simulate any experiences, and a modern-day variant, can help test our ethical intuitions about the consequences of re-engineering humanity. What ultimately differentiates humans and machines is that we can and do make choices that diverge from simple optimization functions. The benefits of networking, automation, and new services that digital connectivity provides should not come at the price of our deepest values.

Re-Engineering Humanity
  • Brett Frischmann, Evan Selinger
  • Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018
  • Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting humanity down an ill-advised path, one that's increasingly making us behave like simple machines? In this wide-reaching, interdisciplinary book, Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger examine what's happening to our lives as society embraces big data, predictive analytics, and smart environments. They explain how the goal of designing programmable worlds goes hand in hand with engineering predictable and programmable people. Detailing new frameworks, provocative case studies, and mind-blowing thought experiments, Frischmann and Selinger reveal hidden connections between fitness trackers, electronic contracts, social media platforms, robotic companions, fake news, autonomous cars, and more. This powerful analysis should be read by anyone interested in understanding exactly how technology threatens the future of our society, and what we can do now to build something better.

  • Foreword

  • Brett Frischmann, Evan Selinger, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
  • Book:
    Re-Engineering Humanity
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp xi-xii
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  • Introduction

  • Brett Frischmann, Evan Selinger, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
  • Book:
    Re-Engineering Humanity
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 1-14
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