Kurzweil: The Singularity Is Near (Week 1)

We'll be discussing Ray Kurzweil's thoughts about the future of technology and how it could deeply impact our civilization in a not-so-far future.

The reading plan for Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005) is as follows:

Week 1: Prologue ("The Power of Ideas") and Chapter 1 ("The Six Epochs") — 23 pages
Week 2: Chapters 2 to 6 — 228 pages
Week 3: Chapter 7 ("Ich bin ein Singularitarian") — 14 pages
Week 4: Chapters 8 and 9 — 58 pages

The plan is to focus on the more conceptual/philosophical chapters but there are also fascinating chapters that go deeper into the technological arguments and concepts that provide the foundation to his theories/predictions. We'll tackle all these chapters on Week 2.

A copy of the book is available for download here: http://stargate.inf.elte.hu/~seci/fun/Kurzweil,%20Ray%20-%20Singularity%20Is%20Near,%20The%20(hardback%20ed)%20%5Bv1.3%5D.pdf

The Toronto Public Library has some copies of the book as well: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/search.jsp?N=4294946253&Ntt=the+singularity+is+near

Or purchase it here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143037889

About the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

Optional but highly recommended reading: The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence - https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html. This series of articles gives a great overview of the possibilities of AI in the future considering a range of possible scenarios.

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"At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and the most 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, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology)