Epilogue

Summary

You can never plan the future by the past.

—Edmund Burke¹

L’avenir est fait de la même substance que le présent.

—Simone Weil²

Weitermachen!

—Herbert Marcuse³

This book seeks to help set an agenda in a new domain of inquiry where things have been moving fast, an agenda that brings debates that have long preoccupied political thinkers into the era of AI and Big Data (and possibly the age of the singularity). Our discussions have been exploratory, rather than guided by a set of theses and the need to argue for them. Some topics we covered are genuinely new, but others continue older debates – though often in ways that call for a breaking down of boundaries as political thought has traditionally drawn them. One point I have made throughout is that the advent of AI requires that the relationship among various traditions of political thought be reassessed. All such traditions must fully integrate the philosophy of technology. Technological advancement will continue for the time being, one way or another, if only because of geopolitical rivalry. Therefore, the task for political thought is to address the topics that likely come our way and to distinguish among the various timeframes (such as Life 2.0 and Life 3.0) in which they might do so.