Bookshot #28: The Singularity Is Near

Sorry about the glare kids, but doesn't it make the book look creepy and futuristic?

I'm now fully prepared to embrace the cyborg future that awaits us all. That's right, we're all going to be cyborgs someday. Or some other non-biological form of life- at least according to the author of this doorstop, Ray Kurzweil.

Kurzweil is a futurist who made his bones studying trends in technology- which is how he came up with his theory on the Singularity. Basically, he says that technology is accelerating so fast that at a certain point (he says 2045- pretty ballsy of him to put a date on it) artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and take over technological development and after that, things will change so fast that our ultimate future will be beyond anything our imagination can conceive of right now.

So how do we get to this magic moment? Kurzweil's theory hinges on a process that's already begun- first, decoding our biology and launching a biotechnology revolution that will eventually lead to us reverse engineering the brain so we can more completely understand how it works. Once that happens, artificial intelligence that can actually pass the 'Turing Test' (have a 30 minute conversation with a human and pass for a human) becomes a lot more conceivable. These advances, combined with perfecting nanotechnology for any number of uses eventually lead to Kurzweil's Singularity moment.

As for the future? Well, we're essentially going to be able to live forever and transfer ourselves to various non-biological platforms ranging from mind up loading to total body replacement to being made entirely of 'foglets' or nanobots that instantly change form. It's going to mind-blowingly cool, according to Kurzweil.

Well, color me unconvinced. First, there's the dicey problem with predictions- especially about the future. More often than not, they fall short. I can conceive of medical breakthroughs that would significantly extended our lifespan and breakthroughs in nanontechnology that allow us to move away from fossil fuels and generally make life better all around, but living forever? Mind uploading? Artificial intelligence? Hmmm... not sure I buy into that.

But I will acknowledge that this book isn't exactly written for 'non-majors' either. That long, long chapter about reverse engineering the human brain? Total gibberish to me- and I free admit I skimmed through it. However, Kurzweil does deserve a lot of credit for kickstarting some really deep philosophical debates- ones that, whatever the future may hold for technology we're going to have to confront as things like biotechnology and nanontechnology and potentially even some form of artificial intelligence emerge- what does it mean to be human? If there is nothing biological left, are we still human? If we upload into a new body or onto a computer- are we still human? Do biological ties define us as human or can we transcend them and truly change what it means to be human?

Overall: Crazy heavy reading but incredibly thought provoking and well worth a read if you want to know what a big, wild, optimistic vision of the future looks like. It may be fundamentally utopian in nature, which to me casts doubt on it's overall veracity, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting.