The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Author: Ray Kurzweil
For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.
Publishers Weekly
Renowned inventor Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines) may be technology's most credibly hyperbolic optimist. Elsewhere he has argued that eliminating fat intake can prevent cancer; here, his quarry is the future of consciousness and intelligence. Humankind, it runs, is at the threshold of an epoch ("the singularity," a reference to the theoretical limitlessness of exponential expansion) that will see the merging of our biology with the staggering achievements of "GNR" (genetics, nanotechnology and robotics) to create a species of unrecognizably high intelligence, durability, comprehension, memory and so on. The word "unrecognizable" is not chosen lightly: wherever this is heading, it won't look like us. Kurzweil's argument is necessarily twofold: it's not enough to argue that there are virtually no constraints on our capacity; he must also convince readers that such developments are desirable. In essence, he conflates the wholesale transformation of the species with "immortality," for which read a repeal of human limit. In less capable hands, this phantasmagoria of speculative extrapolation, which incorporates a bewildering variety of charts, quotations, playful Socratic dialogues and sidebars, would be easier to dismiss. But Kurzweil is a true scientist--a large-minded one at that--and gives due space both to "the panoply of existential risks" as he sees them and the many presumed lines of attack others might bring to bear. What's arresting isn't the degree to which Kurzweil's heady and bracing vision fails to convince--given the scope of his projections, that's inevitable--but the degree to which it seems downright plausible. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Foreign Affairs
American life today is being rapidly and continuously transformed by technological progress. Kurzweil is admirably placed to give outsiders a look at the world as the technological revolutionaries see it — and it is anything but flat. For Kurzweil, the overwhelming fact of contemporary life is the geometric acceleration of technological development. Today we are at "the knee of the curve" — the point just before the gently rising slope of technological change becomes a vertical rise. This heralds, Kurzweil argues in terms borrowed from astrophysics, the approach of a historical "singularity": a state of affairs so radically different from everything in the past that we can know virtually nothing about it. At present rates of progress, only a few decades from now, computers that have one billion times the information processing power of the assembled brains of the entire human race will cost less than $1,000. As scientists and businesses harness this power, rates of social and technological change will accelerate further, leading to a qualitative change in the way human society works — and, indeed, in what human life is like.
Library Journal
Former LJ columnist Kurzweil (also winner of a National Medal of Technology) on what he calls the singularity: the point when we merge with machines, moving from reality to virtual reality and solving issues like aging, pollution, and world hunger. Whew! With a five-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Worried about the Singularity? Fear not-here's the lowdown from an expert. The Singularity, almost an article of faith in techie circles, is the point at which machine intelligence outstrips human brainpower. Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines, 1999, etc.) spends much time stressing the point that progress in the computer field moves at exponential rates. By his reckoning, the raw power of information technologies is doubling annually. This power increase, combined with the predicted growth of nanotechnology-robots the size of red blood cells inserted into the body-will make possible, within two decades, complete scanning of the human brain. By then, computer hardware should be capable of running accurate software models of human intelligence. By the end of the 2020s, computers will pass the Turing Test, simulating a living person well enough to fool an interrogator. At that point, Kurzweil believes, a genuine synthesis of the strengths of human and machine intelligence becomes possible: pattern recognition and inference on the human side, large memory with instant recall and easy data-sharing on the machine side. Freed from the built-in limitations of the brain, machine intelligence will then be able to use nanotechnological design to far exceed human intelligence. But at the same time, nanotechnological implants can be used to augment human brains, creating a hybrid intelligence unlike anything previously known. Ultimately, Kurzweil predicts, the predominant component of human intelligence will be non-biological, and more of our experiences will take place in virtual reality than in the physical world. Human-machine intelligence will saturate the immediate vicinity of the Earth,and eventually grow to fill the universe. Kurzweil backs his predictions with numerous citations of other experts, and while some of the arguments are dense, the book repays close attention. An attractive picture of a plausible future; in 20 years, we may know if it actually works.
Table of Contents:
| Prologue : the power of ideas | 1 | |
| Ch. 1 | The six epochs | 7 |
| Ch. 2 | A theory of technology evolution : the law of accelerating returns | 35 |
| Ch. 3 | Achieving the computational capacity of the human brain | 111 |
| Ch. 4 | Achieving the software of human intelligence : how to reverse engineer the human brain | 143 |
| Ch. 5 | GNR : three overlapping revolutions | 205 |
| Ch. 6 | The impact ... | 299 |
| Ch. 7 | Ich bin ein Singularitarian | 369 |
| Ch. 8 | The deeply intertwined promise and peril of GNR | 391 |
| Ch. 9 | Response to critics | 427 |
| Epilogue : how singular? : human centrality | 485 |
Office 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies
Author: Peter Weverka
• Revised and updated to cover changes to all of Office's applications and productivity tools
• Offers beyond-the-basics coverage of Office word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mail, databases, and desktop publishing
• Covers Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, productivity tools such as Microsoft OneNote, and SharePoint
• Thoroughly updated to cover the new Office interface as well as new features in each application
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