OT: The Future

What do you think the next 20 to 30 years will be like? If you are like
most people you think it will be like the last 20 to 30 years and there is a
good chance that you would be unprepared for the powerful changes coming and
the the rapid pace of those changes.

That is just a small part of the thesis of a book I have just read: The
Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil. It
describes the exponential nature of technology and gives a lot of
predictions ( many seem at first to be too fantastic to be believed) for
what the future holds along with the data and reasoning behind his
predictions. In particular it discusses genetics (biotechnology),
nanotechnology and robotics (hard AI). Along the way the book touches on
cosmology, quantum physics, life extension, DNA, evolution and artificial
intelligence and many other interesting subjects. There are extensive
footnotes to references on the web and elsewhere. While he is an optimist,
he understands and discusses the potential downside of these technologies
and what we might do to avoid wiping ourseleves out.

I personally experienced a major wake-up call from reading this book. The
early part of this new century will certainly be a critical time for
humanity and the sooner we start thinking about it the better prepared we
will be. You may or may not agree with his reasoning and conclusions but
this book will definitely give you a lot to think about. Well I just found
it to be an extremely interesting book and so I thought some of you here
might also like it. YMMV.

Some of you have probably already read this book and if so I would be
interested in getting your opinions and impressions.


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Future
    ... is a good chance that you would be unprepared for the powerful changes ... describes the exponential nature of technology and gives a lot of ... predictions for ... what the future holds along with the data and reasoning behind his ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: The Future
    ... a good chance that you would be unprepared for the powerful changes coming ... describes the exponential nature of technology and gives a lot of ... predictions for ... what the future holds along with the data and reasoning behind his ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: from jms: research help
    ... traveling quite a lot in researching a new movie project that I ... The main emphasis is on advanced technology. ... 2000-year-old selves could make some pretty good predictions, e.g., ...
    (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated)
  • Re: compiling a Lisp source to exe
    ... Kurzweil is a very smart man and you both may be much smarter ... We know that very few predictions made by ... example with the medal of technology, which is the highst award the US ... progress a few more years. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Entropy in crystalization: up or down?
    ... be represented by a longer length of string. ... Although the predictions ... perfection here, just a basis for picking a hypothesis of random vs. ... All that is left then is inductive reasoning from what limited ...
    (talk.origins)