Event Details 

Innovations That Will Change The Ways We Experience Life
We will read and discuss Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny by Debora L. Spar, Dean of the Harvard Business School Online. She
argues that the major changes we are seeing in biology and artificial intelligence are about to change how we think of ourselves in fundamental ways, as
they have in the past. Ms. Spar begins by showing how monogamy was heavily influenced by the plow; the nuclear family emerged along with the industrial
revolution; and devices like the dishwasher set the stage for the second-wave of the feminist movement. In their day, the car, and later the pill upended
courtship and sex. Now, as we enter an era of artificial intelligence and robots, how will our deepest feelings and attachments evolve? What will happen to
our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for new ways to create babies? What will happen to our understanding
of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between?
What will happen to love, sex and
romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our
most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created? She says, “We make Machines and they make us!”

Gerry Lapidus has conducted OLLI book discussions since 2005. The classes are informal and conversational. He leads the first week’s discussion and
requests volunteers to lead the remaining sessions while he serves as moderator. Please read the Prologue and Section 1 (p.3-38) for the first session.