Book Review & Discussion : The Singularity Is Near

In this event, you’ll learn

How DNA-powered computers will give us 1000x increases in processing power
Why your smartphone might soon be smarter than you
What will enable gene therapy to become common practice
The reason organ donations will be unnecessary soon
Why your body will at some point be more technology than biology, and how that’ll give you X-Men style abilities
How you’ll be able to download knowledge into your brain by 2030, just like Neo did in The Matrix
When $1,000 will get you a computer that’s smarter than all of humanity combined

About the Author

Ray Kurzweil is a prize-winning author and scientist. Recipient of the MIT-Lemelson Prize (the world’s largest for innovation), and inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame, he received the 1999 National Medal of Technology. His books include The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Age of Intelligent Machines.

Overview

The bestselling author of The Age of Spiritual Machines presents the next stage of his compelling view of the future: the merging of humans and machines.

The great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is one of the best-known and controversial advocates for the role of machines in the future of humanity. In his latest, thrilling foray into the future, he envisions an event — the "singularity" — in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that our bodies and brains will merge with our machines.

The Singularity Is Near portrays what life will be like after this event—a human-machine civilization where our experiences shift from real reality to virtual reality and where our intelligence becomes nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence. In practical terms, this means that human aging and pollution will be reversed, world hunger will be solved, and our bodies and environment transformed by nanotechnology to overcome the limitations of biology, including death.

We will be able to create virtually any physical product just from information, resulting in radical wealth creation. In addition to outlining these fantastic changes, Kurzweil also considers their social and philosophical ramifications. With its radical but optimistic view of the course of human development, The Singularity Is Near is certain to be one of the most widely discussed and provocative books of 2005.