As soon as I picked this book up, I could not put it down! And I’ve never heard of James Lovelock before this. Apparently, he’s some scientist who invented a little device that could measure the CFC level in the atmosphere? Anyway, I think I must have heard his name mentioned in a radio program on Radio National. So I looked him up at my library’s catalogue and voila they hold some books by him. I borrowed a few – this one I think is his latest and the last book he wrote before his death in 2022. He was 103!

According to Lovelock, the Novacene is the era we are in now. The era of hyperintelligence – when humans and cyborgs (artificial intelligence – AI) coincide. And that by embracing AI, we as humans we will be able to save Gaia (Earth) from the environmental/climate catastrophe that we are facing right now. The Gaia hypothesis that Lovelock came up with suggest that “living organisms on the planet interact with their surrounding inorganic environment to form a synergetic and self-regulating system that created, and now maintains, the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible”. This is actually the first time that I have heard of this hypothesis (which by the way was ignored and ridiculed by scientists such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen J Gould when the theory first came out) and from reading about it I believe in this hypothesis. So go James!

Lovelock grew up as a Quaker so I get the feeling that some of the writing sounded like a religious book but in saying that it’s not something that you should be put off from reading. He predicts that we as humans should not fear the existing AI system as they will also be dependent on the health of the planet as we do. So we we will be more in partnership with them rather than enemies (not like the cruel violent machinges from the movie The Matrix) if we want to survive and maintain the health of our planet. Anyway, there are so much good stuff in this book that I’m not going to spoil it for you – just read it!