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Summary: here comes the future and I can't wait!
Review: Like another reader on this list, I started rereading the book as soon as I finished it. I enjoyed the upbeat, playful tone, and I enjoyed his extrapolation of current trends into the future. I can see us merging with our technology now. Just walk down a street and look at the people talking on cel phones or whizzing down the sidewalk on their electric wheelchairs. We're merging. And this merging is just going to keep getting faster. I for one am happy to have some idea about how this merging process is likely to evolve, and I feel like Kurtzweil's book helped me out. Kurtzweil made me feel lucky to be alive now. If this is the future, bring it on! And if it ain't, it sure was a fun read.
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Summary: Check Out Keith Devlin's Book
Review: People wanting a counter-argument to Kurzweil should check out Keith Devlin's book, "Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of Mind."
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Summary: A provocative, interesting, and frightening book.
Review: A provocative, interesting, and frightening book foretelling the future. In one aspect, I want to see what Mr. Kurzweil predicts come to pass, but in another aspect, I don't. It somewhat reminded me of Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte.
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Summary: Brilliant...
Review: A brief anecdote: Thinking about the 19th century, people believed that we will sooner or later land on the moon. But they were also convinced that firing a capsule out of a cannon was far more realistic than building rockets. I wonder how many blockbusters will come out of ambitious projects? Ray often seems to take for granted all kind of work in progress. Is nanotechnology as promising as space exploration was 30 years ago? If so, there is no need to hurry. I definitely think that Ray should have devoted a chapter to unexpected breakthroughs as they have greatly contributed in the past to the law of accelerating return. We discovered the micro chip almost accidentally a generation ago and that is the essence of human being: we are not totally predictable. We may be heading towards a quantum leap... I was deeply disappointed by the chapter "...and bodies" which I consider the weakest of the book. It is a difficult subject and Ray wrote a science fiction review of work of people he happens to know. Ray himself quoted in this chapter that " science fiction films is always a good source for inventing the future". Well, to his credit he recognizes that his argument is not convincing. Sorry Ray, the rest of the book is far above this disastrous chapter. Nevertheless, This book is a fascinating piece of work. I can only say praises for evidences of the law of accelerating return and the brilliant part one. I warmly recommend this book and see you all in 2009.
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Summary: Just a must read survey, no more no less
Review: It is a great book covering a comprehensive survey of the current achievement of computer science and predicting the future along the line. There is no ground to argue that the machines will not shape the world in the upcoming two or three decades foreseen by the author. However, the ultimate agenda behind the book that machine intelligence will one day surpass or at least be equivalent to human intelligence is provoking, though not new. The author intentionally get around the traditional argument on mind and consciousness against materialism and mechanism, which I believe should be treated in certain depth once the author decides to touch the question. As a result, this book is rather another propaganda or manifesto of computer science that also concludes the achievement of the past fifty years; the early version of such kind of computer manifestos had been seen more than often in early fifties right after the first computer constructed. The fundamental underlying theory to justify author's brave new world is the author's version of Church-Turing thesis. Not to mention that Church-Turing thesis is more like an empirical statement instead of a proven mathematical theory, the author's version is simply incorrect. The author intentionally, I believe, twists Church-Turing thesis to fit in with his declaration. Moreover, the author's interpretation on Godel's theorems and Penrose's ideas are not all correct, and sometimes are missing the points of their theorems and arguments. Put it simple, this book is an excellent book, without a doubt, providing an over-optimistic view for computer scientists, but it is also a great misleading if one wants to look at the limitation of machines.
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Summary: Completely changed my outlook and conception of the future.
Review: I had a notion of the future. A vision of what I thought it would look like. It was nothing like that described by Kurzweil. But through careful examination of my own concepts and Kurweil's logical assumptions, I have completely changed my outlook and conception of the future. It's rare that a book can so alter a persons view of the world. But that is precisley what Kurweil has done with the The Age of Spiritual Machines.
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Summary: Enticing title requires very large leap of technology faith
Review: Being interested in "Spirited Science", this book left me wanting for more content regarding spirit. The current trends in consciousness, chi, prayer, etc were practically ignored in this book, with a predominate emphasis on western style computer technology. Kurzweil's exciting future virtual landscape may happen, but most likely because of different technology trends. If humans are really large scale, coherent, biological quantum information/computing systems, then classical neural networks and algorithms will never lead to machines that dream or meditate. The most likely future will prove out that consciousness is more than classical bits stored on a network disk. I kept waiting for the research supporting spirit to be reviewed with the same care used in the early section on history of computing, but it never materialized. Maybe the next edition will have a more balanced view by providing another chapter on the consciousness technology revolution happening around us.
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Summary: wow whatta developer, but it can't all come true
Review: Great explanations of technical concepts that will influence the future by an incredible entrepreneur. Cool info on the beginnings of Luddites and some possible revolutionary influences on the brain and music. In the future... entertainment = VR, philosophical question = What is human/alive/sentient, computer = ubiquitious network, education = VR and chiplants, business = creation of new knowledge with educators as most important, arts = done by machines, health = longer life w/ implants/transplants/replants. What about ethical consulting, Ray ??? Interesting proposal for Kurzweil's Law of accellerating returns. Computers think, but humans learn much faster than artificial neural nets, hmmmm.
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Summary: Must read for those who will be the future.
Review: Absolutely fascinating. I was of the mind that computers will resent our (mankinds) inefficiencies and bad behavior once they can think for themselves. This book gives me hope that we will far exceed our wildest limitations.
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Summary: be prepared for things to come!
Review: One of the most compelling and thought provoking books I have ever read, Mr. Kurzweil takes us on quite a ride through his vision of the future, and what a vision it is! Even if only one-quarter of the visions that Mr. Kurzweil portray come true in the time frame he gives us, we will still be in for an interesting time indeed. Getting us to think about the possibilities of ever accelerating techological advances is what, I believe, is the purpose of this book. It is not to be taken literally, word for word, as many people have apparently done while reading this book. Even Mr. Kurzweil admits how difficult future predictions can be. Instead, it invites the reader to imagine the possibilities and to prepare for what may lie ahead, and this is the key to accepting and utilizing these advances. This is a definite must-read for anyone interested in one possibility of where the future may lead us.
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