Who Are We Now?

From renowned Google AI engineer, designer, and writer Blaise Aguera y Arcas comes an exploration of the contested territory biology, ecology, history, and culture, and how they intertwine to create a dynamic “us” that can neither be called natural or artificial.

Gender and identity occupy the front line in today’s culture wars, pitting urban culture against the more rural traditions of our past.

At the heart of this book is a set of surveys conducted between 2016 and 2021, asking thousands of anonymous respondents all over the United States questions about their behavior and identity, and especially about gender and sexuality.
The resulting window into people’s lives is a bit like that of the Kinsey Reports, which scandalized postwar America more than 70 years ago. Now, the landscape is, to use today’s language, even queerer. 20th century heterosexual “normalcy” is on the decline, especially among young and urban people.
This book delves deep into the demographic particulars of those changes, as Aguera y Arcas argues that evolving patterns of gender and sexuality aren’t mere trends of the moment but are part of a larger shift away from biological reproduction and toward a more planetary sense of human identity.
This will have profound implications for humanity’s future.