[Momaw Nadon]

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a twenty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” PBS selected him as one of “sixteen revolutionaries who made America,” along with other inventors of the past two centuries. An inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world’s largest for innovation), and twelve honorary doctorates and awards from three U.S. presidents, he is the author of four previous books: Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (coauthored with Terry Grossman, M.D.), The Age of Spiritual Machines, The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, and The Age of Intelligent Machines.

[Momaw Nadon]

IMHO, this is the most important book of the new century.

[Tench_Coxe]

[Brilliant]

Hmm... I thought when I read the title that it was about a black hole swallowing us up.

[inquest]

Singularity. Now there's a rallying cry.

[Momaw Nadon]

Ping!

[Captain Rhino]

Welcome to the Matrix.

[PatrickHenry]

It all began with the TV remote control ...

[SamAdams76]

Hopefully this does not extend to animals. For example, if cats were to get smarter and learn to read, we would all be in big trouble.

[little jeremiah]

It's called "Let's Play God". Result: hell on earth. Let God be God.

[Petronski]

Sounds like a bit of a nutbar to me.

[Fruitbat]

Do we have a pic of Michael Jackson dismantled...

[TruthConquers]

"... and you will be like God," the serpent said.

Be VERY careful.

[RightWhale]

I don't there is anything to this. I don't see the machines getting up off the sofa to shovel out the snow in the driveway. Nor weeding the garden. Nor fighting a wildfire. Nor, in fact, doing any actual work. Nor even successfully implementing a major long range plan. Of course we don't do that last well at all either.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Transhumanist
Tracking
System

(click on radar)

[Jo Nuvark]

Kurzweil as in synthesizer? Keyboard? Music Sampling? Piano?

[jennyp]

As long as we have contingency plans to deal with those monsters from the Id!

[tallhappy]

Crackpot stuff -- high class, nice name dropping crackpot stuff, but crackpot none the less.

Yes he did do serious practical things early on, but this is all showbiz. All sizzle, no steak.

I was glad to see Tom Bethell comment on Kurzweil's charlatanism in the recent American Spectator.

[RobFromGa]

I'd recomment "The First Immortals" by Halperin as a good read for anyone interested in the idea of science providing answers to physical death in the near term future. It is a novel, but well researched.

I'd also recommend "The Truth Machine" by the same author as a future history where we have been able to 100% detect when someone is lying, and what that would mean to society.

[mrsmith]

"...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 own creations. "

Eternal porno.

Louis Wu's wire. With a remote control the masters can turn to a low setting for work and war.

Of course we here at Alien Mind Control Satellite Industries won't give up our evil hegemony without a fight!

[D-fendr]

Interesting concept. Nice technology no doubt. But fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of human beings.

I'd file the hype portion of this one with the antique notion: "The human mind is just a computer."