Hybrid Humans: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Man and Machine
Author: Harry Parker
Format: Paperback, 224 pages, 128mm x 196mm, 180 g
Published: 2023, Profile Books Ltd, United Kingdom
Genre: Popular Science
As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
An eye-opening account of disability, identity, and how robotics and AI are altering our understanding of what it means to be human - from the bestselling author of Anatomy of a Soldier
Harry Parker's life changed overnight, when he lost his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. That took him into an often surprising landscape of a very human kind of hacking, and he wondered, are all humans becoming hybrids?
Whether it's putting on contact lenses every day or DIY biohackers tinkering in garages, Parker introduces us to the exhilarating breadth of human invention - and intervention. Grappling with his own new identity and disability, he discovers the latest robotics, tech and implants that might lead us to powerful, liberating possibilities for what a body can be.
'I loved Hybrid Humans. A way of looking at the future without nostalgia for the past' - Jeanette Winterson
Harry Parker is the author of Anatomy of a Soldier (2016), translated in eight languages. He grew up in Wiltshire, and was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London.
As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
An eye-opening account of disability, identity, and how robotics and AI are altering our understanding of what it means to be human - from the bestselling author of Anatomy of a Soldier
Harry Parker's life changed overnight, when he lost his legs to an IED in Afghanistan. That took him into an often surprising landscape of a very human kind of hacking, and he wondered, are all humans becoming hybrids?
Whether it's putting on contact lenses every day or DIY biohackers tinkering in garages, Parker introduces us to the exhilarating breadth of human invention - and intervention. Grappling with his own new identity and disability, he discovers the latest robotics, tech and implants that might lead us to powerful, liberating possibilities for what a body can be.
'I loved Hybrid Humans. A way of looking at the future without nostalgia for the past' - Jeanette Winterson
Harry Parker is the author of Anatomy of a Soldier (2016), translated in eight languages. He grew up in Wiltshire, and was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London.