A few years ago, each day seemed to bring forth a new gene for this or that. This, too, is hardly surprising: key for humans, throughout their long pre-history as hunter-gatherers, has been the ability to find food, remember where food is and tell the others about it. Indeed, there may not be any need to tell the others where the food is in the future, because in an important sense there are no others. Richard Brautigan, the great hippy writer, envisaged a “cybernetic meadow” in which “mammals and computers live together in mutually programmed harmony”. • This is an edited version of a lecture delivered by Will Self as part of Scottish Book Week.

Source: The Guardian November 25, 2016 12:00 UTC