The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

The Singularity is Near is one of the most audacious books I have ever read outside of religious texts. I mean audacious in a positive manner, in terms of the scope of material covered, the command of technical detail and inspired vision of the future. For a relative small price to pay, the reader is invited on a mind-blowing journey of what is possible in the near future, due to the relentless and overpowering reach and march of technology, and an extrapolation of where that journey is taking us. Glimpses of that extrapolation can be seen even now. Bottomline, Kurzweil explains in fairly understandable detail where the exponential growth in computer processing, microelectronic and medical advancements are taking us and the book is as much a warning for humans to get ready for the future as an inspired vision. By 2045 Kurzweil predicts the Singularity will occur; that is, humans will transcend biology, i.e. we will no longer be fully human but will be "part man/woman and part machine" or cyborg in other words. The implications are not grasped by many Kurzweil implies but he attempts to prove by extrapolation from Moore's Law and the Turing Test how that might occur. Kurzweil contends that once the Singularity is achieved, humanity will be off to the races in terms of growth potential since human intelligence will be digitized and can be uploaded, downloaded, and interchanged much like computers operate today and the human body will be increasingly machine-like as organs will become passe'. The book is an intellectual feast whether one agrees with Kurzweil or not. There are great discussions as to when computers will become indistinguishable versus humans (Turing Test), a calculation of the computing power of a rock (yes, you read correctly) and a romp in the calculation of the likely number of intelligent civilizations in the universe (Kurzweil thinks there is only one and it happens to be us) using the Drake Equation where he explains his assumptions in each variable. The latter exposition is the single best discussion I have ever read anywhere (Sagan et al)on the issue of intelligent life potential in the universe. If nothing else, the book is dynamite to any serious reader who likes to ponder the future and technological change. The downside for many readers will be Kurzweil's atheistic approach which views humanity as souless organisms and an unrealistic view that the bulk of current humanity could ever reach the potential he describes. As a Christian I don't take offense at Kurzweil's thesis, however, because the Bible argues that humanity only reaches full potential in Christ, otherwise humanistic approaches devolve into evil whether abetted by technology or not. Kurzweil is only focusing on the humanistic approach and he doesn't believe (his opinion) that the trends he is discussing will progress toward evil or cause ever more chaos in the world. That perhaps is a very tall stretch when considering the shape of our world today. Notwithstanding, I can accept Kurzweil's thesis without offense because it is one man's opinion versus that of many others. I can thank him, though, that his projections are as much a warning as to where technology can be taking us and the scientific community is not preparing the rest of us very well on that subject. Objectively, one should appreciate the brilliance of Kurzweil, his command of technical issues and his sheer attempt at depicting such a theme in the first place. Truly audacious.

Ray Kurzweil is without question one of the greatest technologists of our era and his ideas should command respect. That does not necessarily mean that all of them are correct. Kurzweil's latest book is a brilliant exposition of one possible future for the human species. As an intellectual adventure it is in the same league with Brian Green's books on string theory and Steven Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science". If you enjoy reading Scientific American you can handle Kurzweil. If Discovery magazine is closer to your speed, a more accessible book is "Radical Evolution" by Joel Garreau. People who read books like these basically fall into two groups, those primarily interested in current trends in science and those primarily interested in the future of humanity. Kurzweil attempts to explain both the explosive development of genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology (GRN) and the profound implications these have for the future of our species. The book is worth buying just for its stunning exposition of current trends in GRN.(Actually Garreau's GRIN, for Genetics, Robotics, Information, and Nanotechnology, is a more accurate and therefore better acronym). Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, Kurzweil does not adequately take into account events external to the world of technology that could and probably will completely derail his predictions about both GRN and humanity's future. In that sense Kurzweil falls victim to the very same `linear thinking' that he decries in others who forecast the future. The term `singularity' as used by Kurzweil means the transformation of Homo Sapiens from a slowly evolving biological species to a race of super intelligent beings no longer constrained by the limitations of biology. This transformation will be the result of the confluence of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics and will occur sometime around 2045. Descendants of Homo Sapiens live forever because the aging process has been halted. All of the world's economic and social problems disappear because all the baggage of biological evolution (species competition for limited resources, sex, aggression, territorial defense, etc.) vanishes. There is little need to work because intelligent machines do it all, even repairing and replacing themselves when they fail or wear out. The new super beings spend most of their time exploring ever deeper mysteries of the universe. Kurzweil backs up his extraordinary claims with a wealth of convincing data, in itself a significant contribution, but more important and the reason this book is worth reading, is his exposition of how this confluence could take place. Kurzweil believes firmly it will take place and this is where his linear thinking intrudes. By linear thinking I mean the idea that tomorrow's technological advancement will follow along the same smoothly upward flowing line that it followed today and yesterday and the day before. If the progress Kurzweil projects for the next four decades were to be compressed into the next five or at most ten years then his forecast could very well turn out to be correct. But in this reviewer's opinion far more powerful and immediate societal forces are at work that will result in a major discontinuity, either natural or manmade. By discontinuity I mean a collapse of the world economy most likely brought about by terrorist related political and military strife followed by widespread anarchy, certainly lasting many decades and possibly much longer. The GRN technologies are not for backyard inventors working in their garages. They are extremely complex, requiring vast financial, physical, organizational, and intellectual resources. Kurzweil's path to the future depends on a smoothly flowing, surprise free world for the next forty years. Can any thoughtful person reading a newspaper today possibly believe this? Let N equal the number of Muslims in the world today, roughly one billion. Let N divided by 1,000 (i.e., one tenth of one percent) equal the number of fundamentalist Muslims committed to die for Allah to destroy western civilization. Do the math and that works out to 1,000,000 suicide bombers coming at us daily for the next forty years. Nineteen high school graduates crashed some planes into a couple of buildings in New York and one in Washington, killed three thousand people, and caused a Trillion dollars in damage to the American economy. Someday the attack will biological or nuclear. It will kill 30,000 or 300,000 or even 3,000,000. No one will know for sure if another is not soon to follow, and another. Uncontrollable mass panic will reign. This civilization risks collapse not because of the buildings destroyed or the numbers killed but because of its extreme fragility due to excessive system interdependence. The collapse could possibly be avoided but the changes required would be profound. It would require too radical a paradigm shift for global elites who cling to the system as it is now. Kurzweil himself acknowledges that terrorism is the most likely scenario that would prevent the Singularity yet he admits that he has no solution for it. I would recommend that he read "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond, and "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler. While these also have some problems in their arguments they point us in the right direction. It would be interesting to see how one of the world's truly great visionaries incorporates the ideas contained in those books into a revised edition of "The Singularity". Civilizations rise and fall. There is no reason to believe that ours is somehow immune to this cycle. One may completely reject the apocalyptic beliefs of fundamentalist Christians, the earth changes of New Agers, and the psychic prognostications of the supermarket tabloids, and still recognize the warning signs that the current civilization cycle may well be nearing an end. This should not be a cause for despair but rather for hope. At some point a new cycle will begin. Kurzweil's singularity is a cautionary vision of where that next cycle may take us. We do not know with certainty but the evidence is mounting that probably there are many intelligent species in the universe. Some of them must have progressed beyond our level of development with all its dangers. All we have to do is figure out how they did it.

Muy interesante, el autor conoce de muchos temas.

Work of art. Except for the sections on Neuroscience and the chapters detailing the present day innovations of 2005. This book is a classic and will be revered in the coming decades.

Fabulous

Ray Kurzweil magari non è sempre moderato e cauto come altri pensatori, ma traccia una prospettiva a tinte forti, di grande ispirazione

Produto de acordo com as especificações.