The Singularity Is Near

friends, and often the rest of the human race, hung in the balance. Tom would retreat to his basement lab and think about how to solve the problem. This, then, was the dramatic tension in each book in the series: what ingenious idea would Tom and his friends come up with to save the day?2 The moral of these tales was simple: the right idea had the power to overcome a seemingly overwhelming challenge.

To this day, I remain convinced of this basic philosophy: no matter what quandaries we face business problems, health issues, relationship difficulties, as well as the great scientific, social, and cultural challenges of our time there is an idea that can enable us to prevail. Furthermore, we can find that idea. And when we find it, we need to implement it. My life has been shaped by this imperative. The power of an idea this is itself an idea.

Around the same time that I was reading the Tom Swift Jr. series, I recall my grandfather, who had also fled Europe with my mother, coming back from his first return visit to Europe with two key memories. One was the gracious treatment he received from the Austrians and Germans, the same people who had forced him to flee in 1938. The other was a rare opportunity he had been given to touch with his own hands some original manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci. Both recollections influenced me, but the latter is one I ve returned to many times. He described the experience with reverence, as if he had touched the work of God himself. This, then, was the religion that I was raised with: veneration for human creativity and the power of ideas.

In 1960, at the age of twelve, I discovered the computer and became fascinated with its ability to model and re-create the world. I hung around the surplus electronics stores on Canal Street in Manhattan (they re still there!) and gathered parts to build my own computational devices. During the 1960s, I was as absorbed in the contemporary musical, cu

Yet its claims are so outrageous that if true, it would mean . . . well . . . the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of utopia. Ray Kurzweil has taken all the strands of the Singularity meme circulating in the last decades and has united them into a single tome which he has nailed on our front door. I suspect this will be one of the most cited books of the decade. Like Paul Ehrlich s upsetting 1972 book Population Bomb, fan or foe, it s the wave at epicenter you have to start with.
Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired

Really, really out there. Delightfully so.
Businessweek.com

Stunning, utopian vision of the near future when machine intelligence outpaces the biological brain and what things may look like when that happens . . . . Approachable and engaging.
the unofficial Microsoft blog

One of the most important thinkers of our time, Kurzweil has followed up his earlier works . . . with a work of startling breadth and audacious scope.
newmediamusings.com

An attractive picture of a plausible future.
Kirkus Reviews

Kurzweil is a true scientist a large-minded one at that . . . . What s arresting isn t the degree to which Kurzweil s heady and bracing vision fails to convince given the scope of his projections, that s inevitable but the degree to which it seems downright plausible.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[T]hroughout this tour de force of boundless technological optimism, one is impressed by the author s adamantine intellectual integrity . . . . If you are at all interested in the evolution of technology in this century and its consequences for the humans who are creating it, this is certainly a book you should read.
John Walker, inventor of Autodesk, in Fourmilab Change Log

Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence. His intriguing new book envisions a future in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable humanity to transcend its biological limitations transforming our lives in ways we can t yet imagine.
Bill Gates

If you have ever wondered about the nature and impact of the next profound discontinuities that will fundamentally change the way we live, work, and perceive our world, read this book. Kurzweil s Singularity is a tour de force, imagining the unimaginable and eloquently exploring the coming disruptive events that will alter our fundamental perspectives as significantly as did electricity and the computer.
Dean Kamen, recipient of the National Medal of Technology, physicist, and inventor of the first wearable insulin pump, the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine, the IBOT Mobility System, and the Segway Human Transporter

One of our leading AI practitioners, Ray Kurzweil, has once again created a must read book for anyone interested in the future of science, the social impact of technology, and indeed the future of our species. His thought-provoking book envisages a future in which we transcend our biological limitations, while making a compelling case that a human civilization with superhuman capabilities is closer at hand than most people realize.
Raj Reddy, founding director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and recipient of the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery

Ray s optimistic book well merits both reading and thoughtful response. For those like myself whose views differ from Ray s on the balance of promise and peril, The Singularity Is Near is a clear call for a continuing dialogue to address the greater concerns arising from these accelerating possibilities.
Bill Joy, cofounder and former chief scientist, Sun Microsystems