Noema #5

Noēma is published by The Berggruen Institute 'established in 2010 to develop foundational ideas about how to reshape political and social institutions in the face of these great transformations.'

The theme of issue #5 is “threshold.”

History is fast approaching an inflection point. Humans are poised to cross thresholds on several fronts: from a planetary awareness enabled by technology that expands the heretofore limited scope of our understanding of the climate and Earth’s ecosystem, to super intelligent machines smarter than we are, to the capacity of synthetic biology to produce life.

How we navigate our crossings as co-creators of this evolutionary leap will determine whether or not the outcome will serve humanity, other species and the planet itself. As one reviewer aptly characterized Noema’s perspective, we are “dystopia-aware techno-optimists.”