An American journalist and filmmaker described as "Part Timothy Leary, part Ray Kurtzweil and part Neo from The Matrix", is in Sydney for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

On 702 ABC Sydney's Morning program, Jason Silva told Linda Mottram that for him, wrestling with challenging concepts was the essence of an optimistic life.

"I always tell people that revelling in big ideas for me is kind of like an antidote to existential angst," he said.

And he said one of these ideas is that natural selection has been overridden by information technology and that humans have effectively "decommissioned natural selection".

"What are we going to make when we can upgrade our biological software the way we upgrade computer software currently?

"Freeman Dyson the famous physicist says we're going to move into a future where a new generation of artists will be writing genomes the way Blake and Byron wrote verses," Silva said.

You can listen to the full interview with Jason Silva by clicking on the audio link at the top of this page.