Baron Robert Skidelsky

It is an old human dream to be freed from toil and hardship. A dream that is becoming a realistic prospect due to rapid technological development, but also a real threat if only a few benefit from this progress, while for too many it is accompanied by unemployment, dependency and poverty.

Time to ask ourselves the fundamental questions again: Do we control the machines or do the machines – and those who own them – control us? What is at risk of being lost in the mania for progress? How can we organize a fair working world and a good life for all?

Robert Skidelsky provides a knowledgeable account of the changing relationship between man and machine: how have leading thinkers, from antiquity to the present day, reflected on technological progress and its impact on humanity – from the first tools to artificial intelligence? Skidelsky shows what we need to pay attention to now so that we can keep our future in our own hands.

Robert Skidelsky was born in Harbin, China, in 1939. He studied history at Oxford and taught as a professor of political economy at the University of Warwick. He became famous for his monumental, multi-award-winning biography of John Maynard Keynes. In 1991 he was ennobled as Baron Skidelsky and has been a member of the House of Lords ever since.

Language: English