Why more people want human extinction: climate change, an AI ‘singularity’, and merging with a cosmic flow of data

“Man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.”

With this declaration in The Order of Things (1966), the French philosopher Michel Foucault heralded a new way of thinking that would transform the humanities and social sciences.

Foucault’s central idea was that the ways we understand ourselves as human beings aren’t timeless or natural, no matter how much we take them for granted. Rather, the modern concept of “man” was invented in the 18th century, with the emergence of new modes of thinking about biology, society and language, and eventually it will be replaced in turn.

As Foucault writes in the book’s famous last sentence, one day “man would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea”.