The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1987 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, as in the two previous versions, Kurzweil attempts to give a glimpse of what awaits us in the near future. Kurzweil's speculative reasoning and selective use of growth indicators (see criticisms levelled here Technological Singularity), much of which has be...
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The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1987 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, as in the two previous versions, Kurzweil attempts to give a glimpse of what awaits us in the near future. Kurzweil's speculative reasoning and selective use of growth indicators (see criticisms levelled here Technological Singularity), much of which has been challenged or refuted, rests on the combination of four postulates:
Kurzweil asserts that a technological-evolutionary jump known as "the singularity" will be recognized as an achievable goal by humanity. Kurzweil acknowledges that belief in the singularity promotes the paradigm shift necessary for its advancement. By promoting the "truth" of its coming through predictions that seem remarkable at the time but inevitable after the fact (a global computer network, a computer beating the chess champion, etc.), Kurzweil's popular series of...
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