Self-Improvement
Technologies of the Soul in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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- US$18.99
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- US$18.99
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We are obsessed with self-improvement; it’s a billion-dollar industry. But apps, workshops, speakers, retreats, and life hacks have not made us happier. Obsessed with the endless task of perfecting ourselves, we have become restless, anxious, and desperate. We are improving ourselves to death. The culture of self-improvement stems from philosophical classics, perfectionist religions, and a ruthless strain of capitalism—but today, new technologies shape what it means to improve the self. The old humanist culture has given way to artificial intelligence, social media, and big data: powerful tools that do not only inform us but also measure, compare, and perhaps change us forever.
This book shows how self-improvement culture became so toxic—and why we need both a new concept of the self and a mission of social change in order to escape it. Mark Coeckelbergh delves into the history of the ideas that shaped this culture, critically analyzes the role of technology, and explores surprising paths out of the self-improvement trap. Digital detox is no longer a viable option and advice based on ancient wisdom sounds like yet more self-help memes: The only way out is to transform our social and technological environment. Coeckelbergh advocates new “narrative technologies” that help us tell different and better stories about ourselves. However, he cautions, there is no shortcut that avoids the ancient philosophical quest to know yourself, or the obligation to cultivate the good life and the good society.
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In this stimulating treatise, Coeckelbergh (The Political Philosophy of AI), a philosophy professor at the University of Vienna, looks at how technology has contributed to a harmful individualistic culture of self-betterment. Consulting thinkers from Erasmus to Marx to Foucault, Coeckelbergh chronicles how social and technological changes have resulted in "a neoliberal and capitalist system that lives on our unhappiness and channels our attention to individual self-help and self-improvement as opposed to social change." The author traces this atomistic view of self-improvement back to the Greek stoics and follows its manifestations through Enlightenment humanists, boundary-pushing hippies, and modern technocrats. Today, social media heightens the pressure to demonstrate one's authenticity, often conflating it with consumer choice: "Authentic selves need authentic products." In this environment, Coeckelbergh writes, artificial intelligence "confronts us with the claim that it knows us better than ourselves," quantifying our steps, online purchases, and sleep cycles and changing how one understands the self. To combat the cycle of discontentment, the author recommends focusing on societal problems and taking inspiration from ancient and non-Western conceptions of selfhood. The provocative thesis intrigues and persuades, and is supported by a cogent analysis of how capitalism and individualism intersect disastrously in the self-help industry. This scintillating "anti–self-help guide" is bold and convincing.
