Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity
It is a non-fiction book based on predicting what the future holds for both humanity and technology summarised in 652 pages.
The Singularity is, according to Kurzweil, The day “Humans transcend biology”. It is further understandable as the day when technology advances over biological evolution and is therefore not susceptible to evolutions limitations any more. In short, The Singularity is an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is not limited to a biological anatomy. The book’s main theme is centralised around the prediction of when The Singularity will be among us. Kurzweil explains that Evolution is broken up into six Epochs. Epoch 5 is where the Singularity will begin. The Epochs range from Epoch one, which is the most basic in terms of information in atomic structures to Epoch 6, which is where intelligence and knowledge is so wide spread that it reaches the far ends of the universe. He explains that this evolution is not limited to biology but also technology. The book also emphasises that technology is growing exponentially and as a result it is hard to see the trend. Kurzweil believes that we are very close to being able to upload a human’s brain into a computer. Nanotechnology is also mentioned in the book and Kurzweil believes that this technology will greatly increase our lifespan and even more so by the introduction of Artificial Intelligence.
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He either uses scientific studies, diagrams and graphs to further explain or back up his argument in a logical way. This is clearly seen in Kurzweil 's argument about the Law of Accelerating Return (Exponential growth of technology). He backs each paragraph up with the appropriate mathematical equations and solutions. According to Forbes magazine Kurzweil is referred to as "the ultimate thinking machine". He is also well known for his contribution in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and text-to-speech synthesizer. The use of extensive scientific words within the book did cause confusion due to the large amount of them. However, these words where always well explained. Kurzweil is very optimistic in writing, he seems to think laterally and in a “perfect world scenario”. Although he argues that thinking laterally will force you to not understand exponential growth of technology, he does exactly this when he explains the development of transistors in CPUs “has doubled every two years” by failing to mention key factors such as economic stability and demand but rather he mentions only basic factors such as “design innovations”. One chapter is specifically reserved to critics. Kurzweil uses this to his advantage and further explains his point as seen with the “rich-poor divide”. He explains using evidence mentioned in previous chapters that this divide between the rich (who are able to afford technology) and the poor (who cannot …show more content…
The extensive coverage of topics relating to the main theme are extremely interesting and helpful in und¬erstanding what is meant by The Singularity. Kurzweil style of writing is easy to follow and read. He is very good at backing up predictions and convincing his readers in what he believes. Kurzweil has left me with many lingering question and as such forced me to start reading another one of his
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