Chris Hables Gray

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Chris Hables Gray foresaw the current global pandemic in 2013 during our 1st interview, which has been perhaps the most undervalued conversation I have had on my podcast. But, despite the fact that he has not been as appreciated by the public as he deserves to be, I have always been a fan of his books. And so, when he asked me to contribute a couple of articles for his latest book – Modified: Living as a Cyborg, I was very happy to do that. I was even happier to have him back on the podcast and hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

During this 2-hour interview with Chris Hables Gray, we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: his 2013 foreseeing, if not outright predicting of the current global pandemic; the role of technology is the many current on-going crises; the Cory Doctorow vs Shoshana Zuboff debate on surveillance capitalism; existential threats, artificial intelligence, and artificial stupidity; the technological singularity – likelihood and timeline; why he is a pessimist of the intellect and an optimist of the will; his latest book Modified: Living as a Cyborg; populism, democracy, Trump and the next US elections.

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Chris Hables Gray is:

Make the news you want to see!

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Chris Hables Gray

Chris Hables Gray is a writer, activist, and teacher. He has published three books: Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen, and Peace, War & Computers, and edited a number of others, including The Cyborg Handbook and the just-released Modified: Living as a Cyborg, both of these with his long-standing collaborators Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera and Steven Mentor. Gray has also published several hundred peer-reviewed articles across many disciplines. The latest is Virus is a Language: Covid-19 and the New Abnormal out in early 2021 in Cultural Politics.

As an anarchist-feminist activist, he has been involved in numerous street protests and related organizing campaigns. Currently, Chris Hables Gray is active in his union (UC-AFT) and in pro-democracy work in the U.S. See his article 100 days to decide the future of America: Trump in the Bunker free on-line.

Chris is currently a Fellow and Continuing Lecturer at Crown College of the University of California at Santa Cruz and an Adjunct Professor in the Technology, Society and Culture Department, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University. He is now working on a number of books: Infoisms: Aphorisms About Information, There is no such thing as nonviolence, Virus Is a Language, Taking Evolution Seriously, and A California Family, which is about genetic identity, genealogy and history, Californian ethnogenesis, and his family’s long complicated story.

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Prof. Chris Hables Gray is someone whose work on both war and the cyborg is a must-read for anyone interested in those topics. I have followed Gray’s work for over 10 years and have read at least 3 of his books. So when I discovered that Chris will be one of the speakers for the upcoming ISTAS2013 conference in Toronto, which I can’t wait to attend this June 27-29, I decided to use it as an excuse to get him for an interview on Singularity 1 on 1.

During my conversation with Chris Hables Gray we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: how Chris got interested in issues related to war and cyborg; the definition of cyborg and why the term has been actively avoided by both NASA and the US military; the difference between a drone and a robot; cyborg society and the politics thereof; why cyborgization is as overdetermined as it is a political process; human nature, nurture, competition and cooperation; Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto; mind-reading, mind-control, and neuro-marketing; philosophy and death; transhumanism and the technological singularity; artificial intelligence and hubris; Gray’s upcoming book on Infoisms…

My favorite quote that I will take away from this conversation with Chris Hables Gray is:

We need good citizenship, strong citizenship like Socrates had when he went and risked his life to fight for Athens. […] We can’t be just people who vote. […] We must be really engaged citizens like our hero Socrates and risk all, risk our lives to make the world better – for our children and our friends.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Chris Hables Gray?

Chris Hables Gray, Ph.D., lectures at the University of California at Santa Cruz and California State University at Monterey Bay in the Cultural Studies of Science and Technology. His particular interest is how information technologies shape contemporary war and peacemaking and the politics of our ongoing cyborgization. He is the editor of The Cyborg Handbook and author of Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen, and Peace, War and Computers. Currently, he is researching social media and social change and finishing a book on information theory entitled Infoisms: Aphorisms About Information.