Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Humanity is consumed by relentless transformation

Like a thief in the night, artificial intelligence has inserted itself into our lives. It makes important decisions for us every day. Often, we barely notice. As Joe Allen writes in this groundbreaking book, “Transhumanism is the great merger of humankind with the Machine. At this stage in history, it consists of billions using smartphones. Going forward, we’ll be hardwiring our brains to artificial intelligence systems.”

The world-famous robot, Sophia, symbolizes a rising techno-religion. She takes her name from the goddess—or Æon— whose fall from grace is described in the Gnostic Gospels.

With an academic background in both science and theology, Allen confronts the paradox of what he calls “good people constructing a digital abomination.” Dark Æon is nothing less than a cri de coeur for humanity itself. He takes us on a roller coaster ride through history and the emergence of Scientism, and from government-mandated mRNA vaccines to the weird visions of cyborg billionaires like Elon Musk.

From Silicon Valley to China, these globalists’ visions of humanity’s future, exposed and described in Dark Æon, are dire and terrifying. But Joe Allen argues that humanity’s salvation is within our grasp. Only if we refuse to avert our eyes from the impending twilight before us.

It is relevant here to quote the unknown author’s bio from Skyhorse’s website here: Joe Allen has written for Chronicles, The Federalist, Human Events, The National Pulse, Parabola, Salvo, and Protocol: The Journal of the Entertainment Technology Industry. He holds a master’s degree from Boston University, where he studied cognitive science and human evolution as they pertain to religion. As an arena rigger, he’s toured the world for rock n’ roll, country, rap, classical, and cage-fighting productions. He now serves as the transhumanism editor for Bannon’s WarRoom.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Regular readers will expect rude comments about religious nuts and radical right-wing conspiracists here. The author is, indeed, a religious nut and a radical-right Koolaid imbiber. Follow any link in his bio that I have left for you.

That does not make him all wrong. There is much to deplore in Musk’s vision of transhuman consciousness. Start with, howinahell can a mere computer contain a human consciousness, let alone millions or billions of them, when the computer is still stuck by the laws of physics in the role of extremely fast calculator? We think a LOT faster than computers, a lot deeper, too. Will the day come when we can upload a human consciousness into an electronic matrix? Maybe. But while it is a good thing to think through the implications of that, and of actual AI not merely the impressively glib LLMs we see today, doing so from this viewpoint is...well...stupid.

For people who claim to base their visions for Humanity on their god’s rule, they have very little faith in her ablity to do stuff for herself...they need to protect this omniscient and omnipotent being from us mere humans’ actions, because they will somehow harm her.

What this book gets wrong is its religion, not mostly wrong like its science. If your omnipotent god does not want transhumanism to occur, it won’t. Simple as that. As she set up rules of physics that present HUGE hurdles to the creation of genuine AI and/or transhuman being, I’d say she has it covered and y’all need to CTFD.

Skyhorse wants $17.99 for an ebook. I say get it out of the library. ( )