Digiselves v Bioselves

How China became the first 'Datatorship'

This is Who made our minds?, my free Thursday essay probing the greatest, cruellest and most beautiful minds of the past 5,000 years, inspired by my book, The Soul: A History of the Human Mind (Penguin 2024). Just insert your email address below and click on the free option. Or you can pay a little to help me help you discover ‘who made our minds’. Coming up: Theocracy versus Democracy; Leonardo da Vinci’s eye; Dinner with Judas

THE CARTESIAN separation of ‘mind’ and ‘body’ is happening, but not in the way Descartes imagined.

Billions of human minds or ‘digiselves’ now exist in the digital realm, detached from the plodding, earthly existence of their bodies, or ‘bioselves’.

Our minds are now treated as billions of data points, that can be sold, imitated, stolen, manipulated or hacked.

China, the world’s first datatorship, uses data harvesting to control the behaviour of hundreds of millions, fulfilling the goal of President Xi Jinping (Image: OpenAI)

Techno giants and governments prefer to…