Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock, published, August 27, 2019

Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock

By @SimonCocking review of Novacene : The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock is published by Allen Lane, in hardback, available from Amazon here. See more reviews here.

James Lovelock is the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory) and the most influential environmental thinker of our time.  His many books on the subject include Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979), The Revenge of Gaia (2006), The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009) and A Rough Ride to the Future (2014); and he is the author of more than 200 scientific papers.  He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974 and in 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen, in 2005 Prospect magazine named him one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals, and in 2006 he received the Wollaston Medal, the highest Award of the UK Geological Society.

The originator of the Gaia theory offers the vision of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence together will help the Earth survive.

James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the Anthropocene?the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies?is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age?the Novacene?has already begun.

In the Novacene, new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by science fiction. These hyperintelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project.

It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Perhaps, he speculates, the Novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age of 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.

Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence reviewed

James Lovelock’s Gaia books have been hugely influential, proposing, and then developing over a series of works the intuitive and vitally important concept that the earth we live on is a delicate, precious and smart, self-regulating entity. We have been deeply fortunate to have the benefits from this smart envelope of atmosphere that has kept us alive, in a safe temperature zone, at temperatures that have permitted us to grow and thrive. Of course with the excess of human activity over the last hundred years especially we have done a lot to threaten this amazing protective environment that has nurtured us.

It is deeply impressive that, in his 99th year Lovelock had the energy, interest and passion to produce, potentially his last book, to expand on these ideas and look to where our future may lie. Many of his strongest ideas from previous books recur here, his belief in our need to look beyond solar and wind for our energy solutions, and the concept that Gaia continues to offer a protective bubble in which we have an opportunity to continue to progress in our goal to understand and better know the cosmos.

Lovelock believes we are now on the threshold of a new era, hence the name Novacene, in which AI, created by us, but not our ‘children’ as such, as they achieve their own autonomy and consciousness, will come to dominate our world and beyond. He is cognizant of the risks that this brings, will we become mere batteries and ‘pets’ for the AIs amusement. Though he also suggests this may offer one route to our continued survival, as a form of organic life which helps Gaia to regulate the planet’s temperature range.

You may not agree with all of the ideas put forward in this book, we feel renewables offer far more potential and scope than Lovelock sees. However it is a well argued and thoughtful book. His reasoning for why we may well be a fortunate freak result is certainly worth thinking in relation to the question of whether we are alone in the universe or not. He believes we almost certainly are alone. With the basic potentially killer question of ‘if there are aliens, then where are they?’! Why have we never seen any?

In a time where climate change is rapidly morphing into climate emergency Lovelock’s book is timely, important, thought provoking and well worth reading, and happy 100 birthday on July 26th to him!

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