
In Defence of Serendipity
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $16.36
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kris Dyer
-
By:
-
Seb Olma
About this listen
In Defence of Serendipity is a lively and buccaneering work of investigative philosophy, treating the origins of 'serendipity, accident and sagacity' as both riddles and philosophical concepts that can be put to a future political use. Taking in Aristotle, LSD, Tony Blair and techno-mysticism, Olma challenges the prevailing faith in the benevolence of digital technology and the illegitimate equation of innovation and entrepreneurship, arguing instead that we must take responsibility for the care of society's digital infrastructure and prevent its degeneration into an apparatus of marketing and finance. For although there is nothing wrong with marketing and finance per se, if they alone lead technological development, free of any discretionary political interference, the freedom to be exploited will be as much a part of the future as our ability to intervene freely in our lives will be a thing of the past.
©2016 Seb Olma (P)2017 Audible, Ltd.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
-
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
Dark Future
- Uncovering the Great Reset's Terrifying Next Phase (The Great Reset Series)
- By: Glenn Beck, Justin Trask Haskins
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At important meetings in 2021 and 2022, powerful leaders from government, finance, media, and business who support the World Economic Forum’s plan for a Great Reset of capitalism launched a new “call to action” titled the “Great Narrative.” The Great Narrative campaign seeks to use the decay of traditional values throughout the West and new and future advancements in technology—including in the areas of artificial intelligence, automation, the metaverse, robotics, and more—to seize control of economies and societies in North America and Europe.
-
-
Very good
- By Yup on 07-23-23
By: Glenn Beck, and others
-
The Fifth Discipline
- The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
- By: Peter M. Senge
- Narrated by: Peter M. Senge
- Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Senge's groundbreaking ideas on building organizations have made him a household name among corporate managers. His theories help businesses to clarify their goals, to defy the odds, to more clearly understand threats, and to recognize new opportunities. He introduces managers to a new source of competitive advantage, and offers a marvelously empowering approach to work.
-
-
Abridged books are inadequate
- By Greg on 02-26-08
By: Peter M. Senge
-
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
- By: Shoshana Zuboff
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.
-
-
Book Editors failed to trim the word count
- By Todd B on 07-14-19
By: Shoshana Zuboff
-
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
- By: Klaus Schwab
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work.
-
-
Friendly reminding : On August 15th, 1971, the dec
- By steve white on 03-24-21
By: Klaus Schwab
-
The Future of the Professions
- How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
- By: Richard Susskind, Daniel Susskind
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.
-
-
I Hope It's Not All True
- By John on 05-01-16
By: Richard Susskind, and others
-
The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
-
-
Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
-
Dark Future
- Uncovering the Great Reset's Terrifying Next Phase (The Great Reset Series)
- By: Glenn Beck, Justin Trask Haskins
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At important meetings in 2021 and 2022, powerful leaders from government, finance, media, and business who support the World Economic Forum’s plan for a Great Reset of capitalism launched a new “call to action” titled the “Great Narrative.” The Great Narrative campaign seeks to use the decay of traditional values throughout the West and new and future advancements in technology—including in the areas of artificial intelligence, automation, the metaverse, robotics, and more—to seize control of economies and societies in North America and Europe.
-
-
Very good
- By Yup on 07-23-23
By: Glenn Beck, and others
-
The Fifth Discipline
- The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
- By: Peter M. Senge
- Narrated by: Peter M. Senge
- Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Senge's groundbreaking ideas on building organizations have made him a household name among corporate managers. His theories help businesses to clarify their goals, to defy the odds, to more clearly understand threats, and to recognize new opportunities. He introduces managers to a new source of competitive advantage, and offers a marvelously empowering approach to work.
-
-
Abridged books are inadequate
- By Greg on 02-26-08
By: Peter M. Senge
-
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
- By: Shoshana Zuboff
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.
-
-
Book Editors failed to trim the word count
- By Todd B on 07-14-19
By: Shoshana Zuboff
-
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
- By: Klaus Schwab
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work.
-
-
Friendly reminding : On August 15th, 1971, the dec
- By steve white on 03-24-21
By: Klaus Schwab
-
The Future of the Professions
- How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
- By: Richard Susskind, Daniel Susskind
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.
-
-
I Hope It's Not All True
- By John on 05-01-16
By: Richard Susskind, and others
-
Virtual Society
- The Metaverse and the New Frontiers of Human Experience
- By: Herman Narula
- Narrated by: Herman Narula
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“A fascinating, provocative case that the metaverse will not merely transform our virtual experience—it may actually enrich the quality of our lives” (Adam Grant)—from the visionary co-founder of one of today’s most innovative technology companies.
-
-
Bold and thoughtful Vision
- By jason phillip michel on 10-22-22
By: Herman Narula
-
Think like a Commoner
- A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons
- By: David Bollier
- Narrated by: David Skulski
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The biggest “tragedy of the commons” is the misconception that commons are failures - relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the market and state. Think Like a Commoner dispels such prejudices by explaining the rich history and promising future of the commons - an ageless paradigm of cooperation and fairness that is re-making our world.
-
-
Excellent overview
- By MG on 01-06-15
By: David Bollier
-
To Save Everything, Click Here
- The Folly of Technological Solutionism
- By: Evgeny Morozov
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?
-
-
The about face shift in view I've been looking for
- By McKane on 03-18-15
By: Evgeny Morozov
-
AI Ethics
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Mark Coeckelbergh
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 4 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial intelligence powers Google's search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues.
-
-
Great book, not for beginners.
- By Santiago on 05-12-23
-
The Happiness Industry
- How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being
- By: William Davies
- Narrated by: Jack Hawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What was a Buddhist monk doing at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos lecturing the world's leaders on mindfulness? Why do many successful corporations have a chief happiness officer? What can the chemical composition of your brain tell a potential employer about you? In the past decade, governments and corporations have become increasingly interested in measuring the way people feel: the Happiness index, Gross National Happiness, well-being and positive psychology have come to dominate the way we live our lives.
-
-
Dry but informative
- By BattleD4d on 10-23-17
By: William Davies
-
You Are Not a Gadget
- A Manifesto
- By: Jaron Lanier
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.
-
-
Naive, luddistic, and ultimately pointless.
- By Naomi on 08-22-10
By: Jaron Lanier
-
Trekonomics
- The Economics of Star Trek
- By: Manu Saadia
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would the world look like if everybody had everything they wanted or needed? Trekonomics, the premier book in financial journalist Felix Salmon's imprint PiperText, approaches scarcity economics by coming at it backward - through thinking about a universe where scarcity does not exist. Delving deep into the details and intricacies of 24th-century society, Trekonomics explores post-scarcity and whether we, as humans, are equipped for it.
-
-
An Amusing & Practical Analysis of Fictional Ideas
- By Lost In The Wash on 09-19-16
By: Manu Saadia
-
Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order
- By: Patrick Wood
- Narrated by: Patrick M. Wood
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Looking underneath the cover of globalization, Wood shatters the false narrative of a promised utopia and exposes the true nature of the deception used to promote this new economic order, in this audiobook. Those elite who hate the bedrock of American liberty and its time-tested constitution have pulled out all the stops to destroy both, and it's time for citizens to stand up to reject them. As always, Wood closes with the nature of effective resistance and the tools that can help to achieve success.
-
-
A MUST !! Understand and Read documents of world r
- By Jaim on 04-23-20
By: Patrick Wood
-
The Utopia of Rules
- On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
- By: David Graeber
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anthropologist David Graeber - one of our most important and provocative thinkers - traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice...though he also suggests there may be something perversely appealing - even romantic - about bureaucracy.
-
-
Not his most serious book, but still really great
- By David Pereplyotchik on 11-19-19
By: David Graeber
-
The Rainforest
- The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley
- By: Victor W. Hwang, Greg Horowitt
- Narrated by: Tom Lorenz
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt propose a radical new theory to explain the nature of innovation ecosystems: human networks that generate extraordinary creativity and output. They argue that free market thinking fails to consider the impact of human nature on the innovation process. This ambitious work challenges the basic assumptions that economists have held for over a century.
-
-
Cyclical reasoning, cheery-picked examples
- By Lizc on 04-03-19
By: Victor W. Hwang, and others
-
Four Futures
- Life After Capitalism
- By: Peter Frase
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this postcapitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism, socialism, and exterminism might actually entail.
-
-
A great read for futurists
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-17
By: Peter Frase
-
Robot-Proof
- Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Joseph E. Aoun
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover - to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot. A "robot-proof" education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society.
-
-
Preparing the future generations for the Future
- By Samer Chidiac on 08-09-18
By: Joseph E. Aoun