Comment upgrade: Kurzweil

Tom asked this question on Better thinking through chemistry:

What is the one great Kurzweil to read?

Comments

[John Robb]

The latest one. Best argument so far. "The Singularity is Near"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143037889/ref=nosim/globalguerril-20

[Elmer Humes]

I agree with John Robb for over all strategy perspective "Singularity is Near" is profound & his best; however "Fantastic Voyage..." changed my life three years ago as I have been following the knowledge from this book regarding personal intake & life style & although I don't expect to "live long enough to live forever" ... I started too late (69), it is the best guidance I've found in this field to experience quality health much longer.

[stuart abrams]

Haven't read any Kurzweil, but feel as though I should as many people rave about him. I tend to have a bit of a Luddite streak and have a lot of skepticism about futurists. There ought to be a word that is the opposite of Luddite to refer to people who have an unreasoning adoration of any technological innovation. My gut feeling is that 100 years from now, people will look at our predictions of forthcoming technological marvels resulting in immortality with the same mixture of horror and amusement that today we look at scientistic crazes of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, such as spirtualism or phrenology. I feel as though futurists often fail to take the factor of hucksterism into account. Drug companies don't want to make people smarter or better - they want to sell drugs and make money. Sometimes the two things intersect, but not necessarily.

[Elmer Humes]

stuart abrams I recommend you read Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines" which was published back in 1999. In this book he predicts Intelligence technology developments coming this century by decade and seeing one has almost gone by you can see how accurate he was during the first decade which is now history. Yes Kurzweil is a futurist but he also is the father of artificial intelligence, the original developer of OCR and the first reading machine, the Kurzweil music machine, etc...who has made millions from his own technolgy developments. Therefore he also is an accomplished "huckster" as well. Read what he writes and you will see why many believe many of his predictions.

[Peter Pesti]

The one - lengthy - article to read (from 2001):The Law of Accelerating Returnshttp://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

[Gerry]

I have only read the "The Singularity is Near," but if Kurzweil is only half right the next 25 years are going to be quite a test of everyone's adaptability. Think of how far we've come in the last 75 years mentally, physically, economically, politically, technologically, internationally, etc. That much and more is coming.

The book is a mind stretcher with the first two chapters being quite accessible and the rest generally proving his point. There are over 100 pages of footnotes. His web site:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html

Is also a mind stretcher, with links to countless factual articles and papers and seems generally free of wild-eyed unsupported speculation.

[Gerry]

When I explained The Singularity to my sister, a retired nurse, last summer, she said, "I sounds like 'The Rapture.'" That was a light bulb moment for me. Apparently others caught it that way, too. The whole June Issue of IEEE Spectrum is titled, "The Rapture of the Geeks," subtitled, "Separating Science from Fiction in the Technological Singularity," "A Special Report."

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/magazineindex

[Anonymous]

Gerry: what a perfect comparison! i am both a Christian and a techno-utopian, but believe in neither the Rapture nor the Singularity. crazy, aye?! ;-)