Ray Kurzweil

“Startling in scope and bravado.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.” —Los Angeles Times “Elaborate, smart and persuasive.” —The Boston Globe “A pleasure to read.” —The Wall Street Journal One of CBS News’s Best Fall Books of 2005 • Among St Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2005 • One of Amazon.com’s Best Science Books of 2005 A radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development from the bestselling author of How to Create a Mind and The Age of Spiritual Machines who Bill Gates calls “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence” 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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

When Humans Transcend Biology

The Singularity Is Near

A controversial scientific vision predicts a time in which humans and machines will merge and create a new form of non-biological intelligence, explaining how the occurrence will solve such issues as pollution, hunger, and aging.

The Singularity is Near

Timeo Williams

For those interested in what the most prominent futurist of our time predicts for the future - read other reviews on this book by those of us in the community or read the book. 

I had difficulty staying present while reading this. I think the two most repeated words in this book is nanobots and AI/intelligence/machines. 

Have fun!

Cristian Garcia

I hear about this book years ago, but I only decided to buy it after a very successful job interview in which most of the conversation delve around this book. I bought the book after the conversation (I knew fairly enough about the singularity before reading the book) and I just finish reading it one year into my new role, because yes, I got the job offer.

Now that I’ve read the book I don’t know how come I didn’t do it before. The book starts a bit technical and then the rollercoaster goes into something that resembles futurism and even science fiction, just to slow down at the end and evaluate the reality from an ethical and philosophical perspective.

What I like the most about the singularity is how relevant it remains and all the doors that it opened to me. I went into other books and some podcasts (like some futuristic conversations with Joe Rogan). At the end, the book made me thought a lot and question many things I deal with at work and how those things are coming into our day to day lives.

Ketan Nayak

** spoiler alert **
           Although this treatise on Singularity was written more than a decade ago, Ray Kurzweil looks to paint a futurist picture of the world a few decades out and a few centuries out quite thoroughly. He mostly accomplishes this by leveraging the exponential trends in tech, healthcare and other fields to depict how society and the state of the world progresses in distinct 'epochs'. Several interesting questions are explored: What does the human body v3.0 look like? What changes will the revolution in GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics) bring? among others. The book also takes a stance on ontology and consciousness and whether that is something achievable within the realm of singularity.

Perhaps the biggest criticism of the book today is the delay in the timelines hypothesized by Ray, in large part due to the slowdown in the exponential trends, which is a central theme in the book. But the author does do his homework in trying to foresee and address these criticisms of the extrapolations. In doing so though, large questions on the timelines remain. The book is certainly heavy reading at certain points and the simulated conversations among humans from the past, present and future doesn't help the readability.

All in all, this is an interesting read if you are interested in getting one perspective on what the future looks like, but do read it knowing that it was written more than a decade ago.

Tomasz

Książka napisana dość technicznym żargonem, autor zna się na tym, co pisze.
Minęło już tyle czasu, że można sprawdzić pewne przewidywania Kurzweila - sprawdziły się w 50%.

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A controversial scientific vision predicts a time in which humans and machines will merge and create a new form of non-biological intelligence.

The Singularity Is Near When Humans Transcend Biology

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