The Singularity is Near [Paperback]

Ray Kurzweil isn't renowned for his authoring talents and is better known for his inventions. I remember many years ago owning a copy of Kerzweil's voice recognition program (I forget the exact title) and being impressed with its accuracy. Kerzweil is also renowned for his work in digital music and a vast array of other fields.

In this book the author expands on his vision of the future as he sees it in the next 50 years. The main thrust of the book is that Moore's law is continuing and as such computing power is increasing exponentially (exponentials are a large part of this book). The premise that as computing power increases dramatically we will be able to create even more technology, with the aim to "uploading" ourselves into our computers. This at first seems like science fiction but be assured that the author looks at every detail and examines the feasibility of each stage of his premise. The results are startling, and I must admit give me a strange feeling in the gut of my stomach when I realised the full breadth of his suggestions.

This book could be considered a sequel to the author's previous books, the Age of Intelligent Machines, and the Age of Spiritual Machines. However you don't need to have read these previous books to understand the concepts involved. A basic understanding of genetics and nanotechnology would help, but are not required.

I don't know if the authors predictions will come to pass (And I honestly hope they do!) but I would recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the future and who wants to prepare themselves in advance.

I am a great fan of technology forecasting (and the Singularity - known as the Geek's Rapture - in particular) and fervently believe in extrapolating today's trends to illuminate the possible paths ahead. While this book has the scientific credibility to power the batteries, the filament (Kurzweil's opinion) is very selective in the future paths that it lights up. It is the author's subjectivity, and unabashed self-promotion that corrode the overall quality of what should have been the definitive post-human road-map.

My main issues:

Kurzweil's mortality:
A basic underlying current moving the direction of the discussion throughout the book appears to be Kurzweil's fear of death. The most frequently cited impact of the technologies he reports, are the ways in which it reduces / eliminates aging. The author is 56 years old (and is quite justifiably proud of biologically being only 40 years old), and constantly talks about how "technology X" currently in development could help avoid death in the next three decades. While it is important, making Ray live forever cannot be the most important feature of the Singularity.

The Singularity is Nearer the West Coast:
Kurzweil makes no attempt to either colour his research, or even explore the implications of the Singularity on anyone not living in California. I found this such a strong theme that it almost felt like chauvinism. The way in which he suggests the Singularity will change life are all to do with how people on the West Coast of the USA currently live. The ideas and projections would be far more accessible had he sought to stretch his horizons beyond San Diego / San Francisco.

No downsides:
Kurzweil is so optimistic he ignores completely the negative, but very human aspects of our intelligence - aggression, xenophobia, greed, hierarchy - and talks of post-humans as being saintly, benign gods working to the benefit of all pre- and post-humankind. The benefits of AI (and the Genetic / Nanotechnology / Robotics technologies in general) will almost certainly be used initially by a very small elite, to propagate their own aims and objectives above those of others. This is the story of any fundamental advance in human history - he does not explain why this most fundamental of all advances will be any different. Surely, those able to achieve a post-human state first will benefit the most, and therefore remain ahead of all others. Kurzweil does not address this topic - the onset of the Singularity, and implications of trickle transcendence - in depth anywhere.

Way too long:
The ideas encapsulated in the book are important, and the author goes into them in some detail - which is essential. While technology forecasting is by its very definition speculative, it is not structured at all well in this book, and could have been made far more accessible. In each chapter Kurzweil will speak in detail about a particular research group or theme - these sections could have been tabulated, showing probabilities of success, impacts on the singularity timing or aspect, etc - this would have made the overall view far easier to grasp, and the act of speculation much more scientific.

Bottom line: Some good - most bad. Based on this book, the only geek getting the Rapture is Ray!!

For those of you who don't know, Ray Kurzweil is the man who invented Optical Character Recognition, along with various other pattern-recognition technologies. He is well-versed in what technology is theoretically capable of, and has spent his professional life trying to make it do these things.

I have nothing but good things to say about Ray Kurzweil, and this book in particular. The ideas that he puts forward may seem very optimistic, sometimes verging on techno-fanaticism, but nothing he is saying is negative. If he's right, the human race only has to survive until the 2040s and things will markedly improve.

However excellent I found the technological predictions made in this book, there are two points that brought it down to four stars. First, and a matter I admit is one of personal preference, there were far too many graphs to do with economy and business. This is an American book, so capitalism has to figure somewhere, and he is forgiven. The other point is that some of the speculations he is making are sociological ones and these are far more spurious than any technological speculations. However, they are not fundamental to what he is arguing.

All in all, an excellent, if at times overwhelming, read. I heartily recommend it as an introduction to transhumanism and futurism.