In the first half of the book, Kurzweil constructs a sturdy foundation for the material and puts forth a number of ideas I can agree with (e.g., his defense of Eric Drexler's views on molecular technology). Ultimately, however, he fails to address (or even acknolwedge) any of the major attacks on strong AI (something he tries, and fails, to make up for at the end of The Singularity is Near) and his own scant discussion of consciousness and intentionality are laughable at best. The latter half of the book is a heavy dose of blind Extropian optimism, replete with free-market fantasies. ( )

I can't believe I waited so long to read this. I don't actually believe most of it, since it gets quite wacky in places, but the idea of "the singularity" seems to have become part of our social memory now. Anyway, if this is really the future, it doesn't sound so bad (which, I suppose, is part of his point). ( )

I gave this book 5 stars based on the beginning chapters, not the entire book. Towards the end, the book became repetitive and dragged on. It did not have to be so long.

The beginning, however, stimulates the mind to the point that you don't want to think about it. What makes us us? This philosophical question is not necessarily answered, but it puts a different spin on it. What is the line between human and machine, for both humans and machines? Really makes you think about what we are and what will come in the future. ( )

Ugh.

This book is like a techno-optimist's response to the Unabomber's manifesto. My problem is that the future espoused by Kurzweil is only slightly more appealing than the Unabomber's.

Specifically, I don't care for his timeline/predictions that humanity will be associating primarily with machines by 2019.

That seems like an inhuman future.

His idea of refinements and how much humanity will accept them also seems overly ambitious.

I would point to video games as an example of the refinements that a computer can "get closer to reality"... Every year, EA Sports's claim that "It's in the Game" gets a bit more appropriate.

But I think we're a long way away from people paying $35.00 to have tickets to see folks play a video game.

If that's a function of the time it takes humanity to accept computers or inherent limitations in computers, I'm not sure... Either way, his predictions seem off-base. ( )

This book is an enjoyable treatise on how the world might evolve over the next century as computing power increases at an accelerating rate. It is perhaps a more technical and constructed version of the writings of a Bill Joy or even the UnaBomber. Kurzweil lays out some theories or 'laws' as he calls them, which are based on historical data, and mixes that data with some relativity theory and Moore's laws of computing. They are graspable but not so solid that they have become widely believed. Extrapolating from the laws, the books lays out a plausible future where computers become much smarter than people; and people increasingly rely on computers for their brain power. There were some issues in the book. First, I really disliked Kurzweil deciding to write a lot of the book in a pseudo Socratic Method interview with himself. Very off-putting, and this leads to my lower rating. Second, the theories or laws are not explained that well. All that said, the fellow is on to something big, and it's so easy to be a visionary without putting specific predictions down, he has to be acknowledged for going out there and making specific predictions even 100 years out. If you now mix this older book with the newer writing of Aubrey de Grey on aging and the progression of biology/medicine, etc., you get quite a picture of life in 2030 or so. ( )