The breathlessly optimistic tone of the book fails to help us distinguish between the pure momentum of change and the essence of evolution. And yet we are 'gods' only in the limited terms of early humans, because Metaman's emergence is giving us an awareness of the true enormity and power of the universe. There is still too little evidence that such awareness is sufficient to halt Metaman's use of its own power to damage critical life-sustaining systems on this small planet, or that imaginative nonviolent alternatives for handling human conflict have greater chance of being implemented by this global metaorganism. Indeed, it is the challenge of building an aircraft carrier to support squadrons of war planes on high seas whch Stock cites as an example of Metaman's superiority over Darwinian random evolution. This modern mythos offers us an expansive new vision of who we are, one that can encompass all humanity in a shared and inspiring future.
Human hubris is the most dangerous threat to the future of the human species, and the human spirit.
Ultimately, the uncritical tone of Stock's argument is the book's greatest weakness,, but the large patterns he draws are important, accurate and provocative. With 245 pages of text and a full hundred pages more of notes and glossary, this is a work well worth reading.