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Title: The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
List Price: $18.00
Our Price: $8.84
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| Customer Reviews: |
| The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Penguin (Non-Classics) A "must read" |
| Ray Kurzweil is an exceedingly intelligent and perceptive individual. His scientific insight into the future is fascinating and frightening. I am listing this as a "must read" to all of my top students. |
| The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Penguin (Non-Classics) A Little Thick |
| This is not for the layman as a whole, but there are some interesting concepts presented. Hard to get through, but certainly brilliant. |
| The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Penguin (Non-Classics) Editor please !!!! |
| I agree with some of the other reviewers... get an editor. If the author had one, he should get a new one. Very thought-provoking ideas are buried in highly repetitive paragraphs and chapters. I can only assume that most of the readers of this book don't need to read things twenty times before they take hold. I feel like the singularity is approaching, but we just collectively pushed it back a little bit by plodding through this bloated volume. |
| The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Penguin (Non-Classics) Great science fiction and futurism, timeline unlikely |
For anyone interested in futurism and science fiction (with a bit more science) this book would be a thrilling read; it certainly makes for some interesting "what if" discussions across the dinner table. I'm sure any reasonable person would view a lot of Kurzweil's projections as extreme and speculative, but perhaps criticizing an author for being speculative in a field (futurism) that essentially calls upon people to speculate may be a bit misguided.
The only serious criticism that I have for Kurzweil is that his time line seems HIGHLY unlikely. Like many futurists, he mostly bypasses any discussion of the economics of these discoveries, but rather treats progress as if it were 'only' a matter of figuring out solutions to problems. His time projections might make more sense if researchers had bottomless bank accounts, but it seems more reasonable that his time line be extended at least 3 or 4 times over to account for the fact that finding ways to establish markets that will fund this enormous amount of research will not be an easy task. I'm sure he'd say that I'm stuck in the "linear" model of human progress, but even with granting the coming of the singularity and his law of exponentially growing returns I can't see his expectations coming about so soon. Either way this book is futurism at its finest and should be read by anyone who is curious about what changes humanity could (COULD) face in the coming decades. |
| The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Penguin (Non-Classics) dry but insightful |
| hard to get through some of the sections. but worth it in the end. |
| The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Penguin (Non-Classics) Product Description |
| 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 classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations. |
