If you loved
Being There
Andy Clark · Book · 1998
You were fascinated by how Being There dissolves the boundaries between mind, body, and the external world through complex technological integration.
Start with the source
Adaptation
Being There
Hal Ashby · Film · 1979
Films on the same thread
Ex Machina
Alex Garland · Film · 2015
Shares a thread with Being There: Artificial Intelligence.
This film explores the dangerous intersection of consciousness and mechanical design, challenging the same foundational questions about artificial intelligence that Andy Clark examines in Being There.
Her
Spike Jonze · Film · 2013
Shares a thread with Being There: Artificial Intelligence.
Like the extended computational activity discussed in Being There, this story illustrates how human emotion and identity can become inextricably linked to our digital and synthetic environments.
eXistenZ
David Cronenberg · Film · 1999
Explores: Reality blurring, Existential dread, Technological dependence.
This narrative mirrors the core argument of Being There by showing how biological bodies and virtual inputs merge to create a singular, often terrifying, reality-altering experience.
Being John Malkovich
Spike Jonze · Film · 1999
Explores: Identity Crisis, Obsession, Existentialism.
You will recognize the surreal exploration of consciousness in this film, which pushes the concept of an extended mind to its most absurd and existential limits.
Series on the same thread
Serial Experiments Lain
Series · 1998
Explores: Existentialism, Identity Crisis, Technological Singularity.
This series depicts the total collapse of the individual self into the network, reflecting the radical embodiment theories central to the intellectual framework of Being There.
Sense8
Lana Wachowski · Series · 2015
Explores: Connectedness, Empathy, Identity.
The concept of shared cognition across physical distances serves as a dramatic realization of the circular causation and interconnected systems analyzed throughout the text of Being There.
Altered Carbon
Laeta Kalogridis · Series · 2018
Shares a thread with Being There: Artificial Intelligence.
This story literalizes the philosophical inquiry of Being There by moving human consciousness between bodies, forcing a reconsideration of where the mind actually resides in space.
Westworld
Jonathan Nolan · Series · 2016
Shares a thread with Being There: Artificial Intelligence.
The evolution of artificial consciousness in this series provides a compelling, visceral look at the robotics and computational themes that Andy Clark explores in Being There.
Podcasts on the same thread
Hidden Brain
Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam · Podcast · 2026
Explores: cognitive bias, human behavior, interpersonal dynamics.
If Being There hit, Hidden Brain shares the thread.
Huberman Lab
Scicomm Media · Podcast · 2026
Shares a thread with Being There: neuroscience.
If the neuroscientific foundations of Being There captured your interest, this show provides the practical, evidence-based applications of those same biological and cognitive principles in real time.
Keep exploring
Common questions
Is Being There by Andy Clark a novel or a scientific text?
Being There, published in 1998 by Andy Clark, is a non-fiction book that explores the sciences of the embodied mind. It examines how the brain, body, and world interact through circular causation and extended computational activity rather than serving as a work of fiction.
How does the 1998 book Being There relate to the 1979 movie of the same name?
The book Being There by Andy Clark and the 1979 movie Being There share a title but are distinct works. The book focuses on robotics and the embodied mind, while the movie is a separate adaptation unrelated to the scientific themes presented in Clark's 1998 publication.
What topics are covered in the book Being There by Andy Clark?
Being There addresses foundational questions regarding the sciences of the embodied mind. The text explores how the brain, body, and world function together through circular causation and extended computational activity, while also incorporating various ideas and techniques derived from the field of robotics.
Does Being There discuss the role of robotics in the embodied mind?
Yes, Being There by Andy Clark specifically integrates ideas and techniques from robotics to explain the emerging sciences of the embodied mind. The book argues that the brain, body, and world are united in a complex dance of circular causation and extended computational activity.