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 c...
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reviews
Jan 21, 2009
David
rated it: 
FUTURE SCHLOCK
(If you loved "Future Shock", and "The Celestine Prophecy" changed your life, this is the book for you)
But, wait! All those 5-star reviews gotta count for something, right? Well, let's take a look.
"We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with supercomputers by the end of this decade."
Really, Ray. How's that coming along? You've still got a year, two if we're c More...
(If you loved "Future Shock", and "The Celestine Prophecy" changed your life, this is the book for you)
But, wait! All those 5-star reviews gotta count for something, right? Well, let's take a look.
"We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with supercomputers by the end of this decade."
Really, Ray. How's that coming along? You've still got a year, two if we're c More...
19 comments
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(22 people liked it)
Jun 02, 2008
Evil_Dead_Junkie
rated it: 
Tired of sleeping peacefully? Do you feel a bit to contented and secure as you go about your daily business? Has your overwhelming sense of anxiety and ennui drifted to a mere background drone rather then an overpowering howl?
Then dear friends this is the book for you! Guaranteed to make you weep softly in the night as you clutch your knees to your chest! Certified to make you stop showering! Neglect your loved ones and friends because damnit what's the point!!?!?! Darkly contemplate More...
Then dear friends this is the book for you! Guaranteed to make you weep softly in the night as you clutch your knees to your chest! Certified to make you stop showering! Neglect your loved ones and friends because damnit what's the point!!?!?! Darkly contemplate More...
0 comments
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(10 people liked it)
Jun 26, 2011
Gendou
rated it:
This starts with the thesis: Technological change is exponential!
This has been true for many measures such as micro-processor size, cost of mass-produced goods, etc.
It is not, however, a general rule of thumb to apply blindly to all things "technological"!
This seems to be Kurzweil's big mistake.
He extrapolates features of technology to an unrealistic infinity.
For example, Moor's law is running up against the quantum limit, so micro-processor size is More...
This has been true for many measures such as micro-processor size, cost of mass-produced goods, etc.
It is not, however, a general rule of thumb to apply blindly to all things "technological"!
This seems to be Kurzweil's big mistake.
He extrapolates features of technology to an unrealistic infinity.
For example, Moor's law is running up against the quantum limit, so micro-processor size is More...
2 comments
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(6 people liked it)
Jun 09, 2008
Trevor
rated it:
Perhaps I will revisit this book and its subject matter relatively soon, let me just say that not long after reading parts of this work I definitely count what is called "transhumanism" to be the "World's Most Dangerous Idea".
Perhaps if someone could explain to me these concepts in terms of why a human being with a shred of moral responsibility would even be slightly interested in pursuing the goal of much of what is discussed herein, I might reconsider my judgme More...
Perhaps if someone could explain to me these concepts in terms of why a human being with a shred of moral responsibility would even be slightly interested in pursuing the goal of much of what is discussed herein, I might reconsider my judgme More...
Jul 19, 2007
DJ
rated it: 
I would consider this an 'impact book', one that truly changed the way I perceive the world. Kurzweil aims to convince his reader that we are on the cusp of an exponential growth in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) that will fundamentally change humanity, creating humans that are fully integrated with machines, live as long as they like, and frequently immerse themselves in virtual worlds. Its premise sounds a bit far-fetched but his meticulous research, incredibly broad grasp of c
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(3 people liked it)
Jan 17, 2008
Dan
rated it:
Kurzweil has made a living of being a futurist and an inventor. Many of his inventions are the result of his predictions coming true, so there is good reason to listen to what he has to say on the topic. The main idea is that the evolution of technology is not linear (as most people think) but exponential. This exponential development of key technologies leads to dramatic changes in human history over relatively short periods of time. Good examples include the internet and cell phones. The book
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(2 people liked it)
Aug 09, 2011
For anyone interested in, and/or connected to the world of technology, this opus by Ray Kurzweil will be an immensely enjoyable read. The author is an inventor, entrepreneur, thinker, futurist but most importantly an exponent of the evolutionary school of ‘Transhumanism’, which celebrates the power and the process of emerging technologies changing the very definition of what it means to be human.
The basic premise of the book is what is called the ‘Law of accelerating returns’, mathematically emp More...
The basic premise of the book is what is called the ‘Law of accelerating returns’, mathematically emp More...
Jan 11, 2011
Mangoo
rated it:
Gli umani trascenderanno i loro limiti biologici? Secondo Raymond Kurzweil la risposta e' si. Inevitabilmente.
Ray e' un ex bambino prodigio, inventore e imprenditore di successo. Da tempo, ovvero fin da tempi non sospetti, sostiene il filone di pensiero esposto estensivamente nel libro (sorta di seguito dei precedenti "Age of intelligent machines" and "Age of spiritual machines"). La sua visione del futuro si sintetizza nel predire (attorno al 2045) il raggiungimento della S More...
Ray e' un ex bambino prodigio, inventore e imprenditore di successo. Da tempo, ovvero fin da tempi non sospetti, sostiene il filone di pensiero esposto estensivamente nel libro (sorta di seguito dei precedenti "Age of intelligent machines" and "Age of spiritual machines"). La sua visione del futuro si sintetizza nel predire (attorno al 2045) il raggiungimento della S More...
Dec 21, 2008
This book was a stretch for me. I am not into science fiction or futuristic novels. But Ray Kurzweil is a thinker. Profound at times. I
appreciate his approach to relaying his thoughts in understandable terms.
His definition of singularity is: a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.
His six epoch of Evolution bear consideration along with his fundamental basis o More...
appreciate his approach to relaying his thoughts in understandable terms.
His definition of singularity is: a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.
His six epoch of Evolution bear consideration along with his fundamental basis o More...
Feb 19, 2012
Alex
rated it: 
This one is interesting if not for its prediction of the future then for its easy to comprehend explanations of what we have already accomplished today. Written in 2005 Ray Kurzweil, holder of 16 patents, discusses, using the "exponential function", what we should expect in the future of engineering, communication, and its rapid rate of availability. For example, looking the rate of growth of communication: from word of mouth to written letters to Morse code to phone lines to e-mail,
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Sep 10, 2011
Keith
rated it:
For anyone whose job depends upon an understanding of the trajectory of technology, Ray Kurzweil has carefully formulated a clear vision of the future, including some pretty fantastic possibilities. We all know the future will be strange. Look back at the 1950's and see how futurists of that time completely missed most of things we take for granted today, and how surely those people would have been shocked if someone had accurately projected the future. Nobody, of course, can predict the futu
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(1 person liked it)
Jul 02, 2011
Sven
rated it:
The ideas in the book are big, no huge! The author points out and documents the exponential growth in many areas of technology, such as number of features on a chip, amount of memory for $1, CPU speeds, and many others. He outlines our trans-human future, when we as individuals will incorporate more and more non-biological memory, intelligence, and cell-size robotics technology in our very persons.
His extrapolations in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/artificial inte More...
His extrapolations in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/artificial inte More...
Apr 10, 2011
David
rated it:
Well, I finished Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near." Very interesting book, though I'm still digesting the contents. I'm not going to attempt to summarize it, but I will say that I would recommend it as reading for anyone who thinks they will be alive more than 10 years from now, since even if he's wrong about 90% of what he predicts, he discusses the issues- and he's probably closer to right on 90% of what he says.
I was thinking as I read the book about one thing I dis More...
I was thinking as I read the book about one thing I dis More...
May 05, 2010
Tyson
rated it:
It's been a few weeks since I read it and the details are already fuzzy - he provides a lot of examples and detailed explanations to back up his thesis. I skimmed through several paragraphs in a couple of the chapters because it gets pretty boring. But Kurzweil's main predictions are at times mind blowing, scary, difficult to buy into.
Kurzweil - who supposedly is a respected inventor and futurist who's made accurate predictions in the past - claims that through technological advance More...
Kurzweil - who supposedly is a respected inventor and futurist who's made accurate predictions in the past - claims that through technological advance More...
Dec 20, 2009
rmn
rated it:
By the 2020s technology will have caught up to and passed human thought/intelligence and by the year 2045 humans will merge with technology and transcend biology due to the revolutions in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.
This is not the outline of a science fiction novel, rather this is the thesis of futurist/inventor/smart guy Ray Kurzweil who sees a "singularity" approaching humanity at rapid speed. His thesis is based on the exponential growth of technology, an area More...
This is not the outline of a science fiction novel, rather this is the thesis of futurist/inventor/smart guy Ray Kurzweil who sees a "singularity" approaching humanity at rapid speed. His thesis is based on the exponential growth of technology, an area More...
Dec 26, 2009
Chad
rated it:
This book has been referenced several times on TWiT podcasts, so I finally wised up and read it. This is definitely not light reading - it's 500 pages of chemistry, biology, computer science, history, and conjecture, plus additional notes at the end.
The basic premise is that the rate of technological advances increases exponentially, and that this will lead to a point around the year 2040 where humans become more nonbiological than biological. We'll not only continue to integrate tec More...
The basic premise is that the rate of technological advances increases exponentially, and that this will lead to a point around the year 2040 where humans become more nonbiological than biological. We'll not only continue to integrate tec More...
Apr 15, 2011
Ken
rated it: 
The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil: dislike it (2/5)
Too optimistic, too wacky, too wrong.
The full title of this book is “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” and like its title, the book is verbose and very, very speculative. I know, I know. What should I expect from futurist Ray Kurzweil other than futuristic foo from the future? How about a book with a coherent structure? How about a book that doesn’t repeat its fundamental premises multiple tim More...
Too optimistic, too wacky, too wrong.
The full title of this book is “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” and like its title, the book is verbose and very, very speculative. I know, I know. What should I expect from futurist Ray Kurzweil other than futuristic foo from the future? How about a book with a coherent structure? How about a book that doesn’t repeat its fundamental premises multiple tim More...
Feb 05, 2009
Kurzweil is one of the world's most respected thinkers and entrepreneurs. Yet the thesis he posits in Singularity is so singular that many readers will be astounded__and perhaps skeptical. Think Blade Runner or Being John Malkovich magnified trillion-fold. Even if one were to embrace his techno-optimism, which he backs up with fascinating details, Kurzweil leaves some important questions relating to politics, economics, and morality unanswered. If machines in our bodies can rebuild cells, for ex
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Mar 26, 2011
Nick
rated it:
I'm mostly interested in the spiritual aspect that this book supposes. If you took out your arm and put a robot arm on, then you took your leg off and put a robot leg on, then you took your eye our and put a robot eye on until all organics are gone...are you even human, but more importantly where did you soul go. This argument brings the human down to truly no different then a machine completely lessening the value of the human. Yet, he wants to live forever. Kurzweil thinks that he can live for
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Nov 30, 2011
Here's a big disappointment disguised as a gaily painted-cake... Call me a "fundamentalist Humanist" if you like (yes, Do!) but, Kurzweil's faith in machinery to save us from our wizened fate really bugs me. He doesn't look at the evils science and technology has brought us, such as bioterror, nuclear war, and the surveillance state, with anything akin to a look backward in reflection. Machines are good. They will ultimately surpass us, and we shall build our bodies of nano-o
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Sep 12, 2011
Paul
rated it:
This is an exceptional, if somewhat optimistic, extrapolation of current technological trends in computation (artificial intelligence), nanotechnology, and genetics. Kurzweil succeeds in persuading open minded readers that we live on the cusp of a singular revolution in technology, in which the pace of technological change will appear to accelerate to rates of change well beyond our own past experience. The emergence of the so-called "singularity," if it occurs, will undoubtedly challe
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Apr 03, 2009
Noah
rated it:
Ray Kurzweil suggests that exponential trends in information technology will usher in world changing revolutions in Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics. By the year 2040 there will be little left of our biological intelligence. Eventually, once we have harnessed the maximum computational capacity of matter, we will expand out from our solar system. He believes that there will be a way to circumvent the speed of light, so pretty soon we're going to be a universe spanning intelligence.
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Apr 15, 2011
Tracy
rated it:
First I have to admit that I only made it to page 50. If Krurzweil redeems himself later in the book, I guess I'll never know. I was expexting more because so many very intelligent people I know have read it and loved it. He seemed to be cherry picking history to fit his ideas, that technology is advancing exponentialy and has been doing so since the dawn of civilization. I don't agree with this. I know that it is advancing rapidly right now, but it has also done so at other times in the pa
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Jul 07, 2009
David
rated it:
Despite its daunting size, this book reads fairly easily, was very well documented, and presents a compelling argument for a future near-term transcendence from our biologically-based lifestyle to a non-biological one, which will propel us into an existence far beyond the limits of today’s world. His timetable of 40 years to the Singularity is intuitively hard to believe, but his observation of exponential technological growth is a brilliant insight. I have to question whether it can sustain o
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Mar 19, 2011
Kaylee
rated it:
I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes to read science fiction and wants to see how someone who is very well read in real science envisions the future.
In the beginning, I was thinking this guy was pretty crazy and was just glad that all those graphs made for some quick turning pages. But then he rather neatly summarized the general ideas about the direction of nanotechnology and biotechnology that I had absorbed while doing research, reading papers, and going to conferences. More...
In the beginning, I was thinking this guy was pretty crazy and was just glad that all those graphs made for some quick turning pages. But then he rather neatly summarized the general ideas about the direction of nanotechnology and biotechnology that I had absorbed while doing research, reading papers, and going to conferences. More...
Aug 09, 2011
Tom
rated it:
I'm now fully prepared to embrace the cyborg future that awaits us all. That's right, we're all going to be cyborgs someday. Or some other non-biological form of life- at least according to the author of this doorstop, Ray Kurzweil.
Kurzweil is a futurist who made his bones studying trends in technology- which is how he came up with his theory on the Singularity. Basically, he says that technology is accelerating so fast that at a certain point (he says 2045- pretty ballsy of him to pu More...
Kurzweil is a futurist who made his bones studying trends in technology- which is how he came up with his theory on the Singularity. Basically, he says that technology is accelerating so fast that at a certain point (he says 2045- pretty ballsy of him to pu More...
May 18, 2009
Fab
rated it:
Pretty exciting and somewhat enlightening to know what the science community is going for. Basically, computers are accelerating at their rate of advance that within the next few decades we'll be able to create an intelligence bigger than human intelligence. Once we do that, the singularity is here, because that intelligence will be a non-biological (or bio mixed with non-bio) and will also be capable of creating a more intelligent being than itself, and the process will keep happening and at
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Aug 31, 2010
Hans
rated it:
I had been wanting to read this for a while now as I am completely fascinated by the singularity as a concept and by Ray "live long enough to live forever" Kurzweil as person, futurist and inventor.
This big book is full of descriptions of cutting edge science and arguments all intended to show that technology develops along exponential curves, that this means that soon we will be able to fully understand the human brain, meaning we will be able to transcend biology and have non-b More...
This big book is full of descriptions of cutting edge science and arguments all intended to show that technology develops along exponential curves, that this means that soon we will be able to fully understand the human brain, meaning we will be able to transcend biology and have non-b More...
Jul 24, 2011
John
rated it:
Kurzweil is the inventor of OCR, voice recognition and a futurist. I've known about his technology for work, but the concept of AI (not the basketball guy) evolvolution is interesting. Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-
than human intelligence - something our grandkids will have to understand and live with.... more later...
7/24/11...
Part of me was interested in exploring what a futurist saw as our technology speeds into the future More...
than human intelligence - something our grandkids will have to understand and live with.... more later...
7/24/11...
Part of me was interested in exploring what a futurist saw as our technology speeds into the future More...
Dec 07, 2011
David
rated it:
This book is very fascinating and technical. Anyone reading it should have an engineering, nursing and physics background if they want to understand all of it. To be honest, I am lucky if I got half of what Kurzweil was saying but that half was remarkable, amazing and frightening all at the same time. Being a well known and accurate "high tech prophet" over the past 30 years, Kurzweil knows what he's talking about and I believe him and the many other scientist that agree we are indeed
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