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Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

Average rating: 4/5

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Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

Penguin Books USA | September 26, 2006 | Trade Paperback

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.

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    Rating: 1/5

    What a load of . . .

    anhaga

    11 months ago

    Simplistic in the extreme and patronizing to boot. A number of predictions, perhaps most obviously the human brain equivalent computer by 2010, are epic fails, and, frankly, it's all pretty much cribbed from Toffler's Future Shock, which missed the target as well.

    Best give this one a pass.

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    It is probably not farfetched to say that "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" is the Singularitarian Bible. It is the one book that anyone interested (together with everyone not interested) in the Technological Singularity must read. No subject, field or issue is too big to fit within this book's subject matter. It examines the cutting edge research in and the implications thereof physics, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, computer science, biotechnology and genetics, artificial intelligence and robotics, nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, nuclear physics and quantum theory, evolutionary theory and sociology, astronomy and cosmology, economics, politics and philosophy.

    This book is meticulously researched and contains over 100 pages of scientific notes and references. It also contains a whole chapter of criticisms which are addressed in detail by Ray Kurzweil. If it does have a weakness it has to be the fact that it is so conceptually and theoretically advanced, so breathtakingly far-sighted and so exhaustively precise in its most minute cutting-edge scientific detail that readers may find it at times hard to follow. (I know I did) At the same time the book is undoubtedly successful at communicating "the singularity is near" message to a broad non-scientific readership.

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From the Publisher

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.

About the Author

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world''s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists. The recipient of many awards and honored with accolades such as "the ultimate thinking machine" (Forbes) and the "rightful heir to Thomas Jefferson" (Inc.), he is the author of four previous books.

Trade Paperback

672 Pages, 6 x 9.05 x 1.4 in

September 26, 2006

Penguin Books USA

English


0143037889
9780143037880

From the Critics

The best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence (Bill Gates)

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