The Age of Em

The Age of Em presents Robin Hanson's detailed exploration of a potential future era in which human minds can be scanned, copied, and run as software on computers. Hanson constructs an elaborate economic and social model of how such "ems" would behave, organize, and interact, drawing on economic theory, evolutionary biology, and organizational studies.

The book examines multiple dimensions of em civilization: labor markets, reproduction and family structures, governance, conflict, and the transition period leading to em dominance. Hanson argues that ems would likely exist in a fast-paced, competitive environment where copies proliferate rapidly and economic pressures shape behavior in ways radically different from biological humans.

Published in 2016, the work has become influential in transhumanist and futurist circles as a rigorous attempt to think through the detailed consequences of a specific transformative technology. It combines academic rigor with speculative worldbuilding, offering both a thought experiment and a framework for analyzing post-human futures.