The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil

There has always been a mix of early and late adopters of new paradigms. We still have people today who want to live as we did in the seventh century. This does not restrain the early adopters from establishing new attitudes and social conventions, for example new Web-based communities. A few hundred years ago, only a handful of people such as Leonardo da Vinci and Newton were exploring new ways of understanding and relating to the world. Today, the worldwide community that participates in and contributes to the social innovation of adopting and adapting to new technological innovation is a substantial portion of the population, another reflection of the law of accelerating returns.

The complexity and capacity of nonbiological entities is increasing exponentially and will match biological systems including the human brain (along with the rest of the nervous system and the endocrine system) within a couple of decades. Indeed, many of the designs of future machines will be biologically inspired—that is, derivative of biological designs. (This is already true of many contemporary systems.) It is my thesis that by sharing the complexity as well as the actual patterns of human brains, these future nonbiological entities will display the intelligence and emotionally rich reactions (such as “aspirations”) of humans.

Human Centrality. A common view is that science has consistently been correcting our overly inflated view of our own significance. Stephen Jay Gould said, “The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”5 But it turns out that we are central, after all. Our ability to create models—virtual realities—in our brains, combined with our modest-looking thumbs, has been sufficient to usher in another form of evolution: technology. That development enabled the persistence of the accelerating pace that started with biological evolution. It will continue until the entire universe is at our fingertips.