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  • Published: 25 July 2023
  • ISBN: 9780141994260
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.00

Ways of Being

Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence




A mind-bending exploration of non-human intelligence, and how it holds the keys to our continuing life on earth

What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans - or do we share it with other beings?

Recent years have seen rapid advances in 'artificial' intelligence, which increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, unrecognized. These other beings are the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us, and are slowly revealing their complexity and knowledge - just as the new technologies we've built are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours.

In Ways of Being, writer and artist James Bridle considers the fascinating, uncanny and multiple ways of existing on earth. What can we learn from these other forms of intelligence and personhood, and how can we change our societies to live more equitably with one another and the non-human world? From Greek oracles to octopuses, forests to satellites, Bridle tells a radical new story about ecology, technology and intelligence. We must, they argue, expand our definition of these terms to build a meaningful and free relationship with the non-human, one based on solidarity and cognitive diversity. We have so much to learn, and many worlds to gain.

  • Published: 25 July 2023
  • ISBN: 9780141994260
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $32.00

About the author

James Bridle

James Bridle is a writer and artist. Their writing on art, politics, culture and technology has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Guardian and the Observer, Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, Frieze, Domus, and ICON. Their first book, New Dark Age, about technology, knowledge and the end of the future, was published in 2018. In 2019 Bridle wrote and presented New Ways of Seeing, a four-part series for BBC Radio 4. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions, including the V&A, Whitechapel, Barbican, Hayward and Serpentine, and exhibited worldwide and on the internet.