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The genius concealed in the non-human realm
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a strangely reassuring book, grounded in exploring our alienation and the creative possibilities inherent in embracing cognitive diversity
Recognising alternative intelligences in the expansive taxonomy of life [John/CC]

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
James Bridle
Allen Lane, £20

IT IS impossible not to be enthused by James Bridle’s epic vision of a future in which digital technology is repurposed to reconcile a blinkered, supremacist human intelligence with the “more-than-human” aptitudes of animals and plants.

Every page written by this original thinker bubbles like primordial soup with optimism about the possibilities were our benighted species to look beyond its navel for solutions to the many problems it has visited upon the natural world.

Ways of Being is Bridle’s manifesto for an “ecology of technology” that recognises alternative intelligences in the expansive taxonomy of life with which humans can collaborate in a bold experiment in mutual benefit to create a truly just world.

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