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At the onset of the twenty-first century,
humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and
thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which
the very nature of what it means to be human will be both
enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles
of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights
of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.
For over three decades, the great inventor
and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected
and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our
future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines,
he presented the daring argument that with the ever-accelerating
rate of technological change, computers would rival the
full range of human intelligence at its best. Now, in The
Singularity is Near, he examines the next step in this
inexorable evolutionary process: 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.
That merging is the essence of the Singularity,
an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly
nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than
it is today -- the dawning of a new civilization that will
enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify
our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear
distinction between human and machine, real reality and
virtual reality. We will be able to assume different bodies
and take on a range of personae at will. In practical terms,
human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will
be stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved. Nanotechnology
will make it possible to create virtually any physical product
using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately
turn even death into a soluble problem.
While the social and philosophical ramifications
of these changes will be profound, and the threats they
pose considerable, The Singularity is Near maintains
a radically optimistic view of the future course of human
development. As such, it offers a view of the coming age
that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological
ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate
destiny.
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.
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