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The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
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The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology Paperback - 2006

by Ray Kurzweil

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In his latest, thrilling foray into the future, a great inventor and futurist envisions an event--the "singularity"--in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that human bodies and brains will merge with machines.

Summary

For over three decades, 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 argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now 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 creations.

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From the publisher

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents an "elaborate, smart, and persuasive" (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development.

"Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world."--Los Angeles Times
"Startling in scope and bravado."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"An important book."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and 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.

While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic 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.

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Details

  • Title The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
  • Author Ray Kurzweil
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Pages 672
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Books, New York
  • Publication date 2006-10-01
  • Features Bibliography, Index, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780143037880 / 0143037889
  • Weight 1.45 lbs (0.66 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.1 x 6 x 1.6 in (23.11 x 15.24 x 4.06 cm)
  • Age range 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Category Science
  • Library of Congress subjects Nanotechnology, Robotics
  • Dewey Decimal Code 153.9

Media reviews

Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world. (Los Angeles Times)

A pleasure to read. (The Wall Street Journal)

The best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence (Bill Gates)

Citations

  • Christianity Today, 02/01/2009, Page 24
  • Library Journal, 04/01/2015, Page 45
  • New York Review of Books, 11/24/2011, Page 45

About the author

Ray Kurzweil is a world class inventor, thinker, and futurist, with a thirty-five-year track record of accurate predictions. He has been a leading developer in artificial intelligence for more than six decades--longer than any other living person. He was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, text-to-speech synthesizer, music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition software. Ray received a GRAMMY(R) Award for outstanding achievement in music technology. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He has written five books including The Singularity Is Near and How to Create a Mind, both New York Times bestsellers, and Danielle: Chronicles of a Superheroine, winner of multiple young adult fiction awards. He is a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google.
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The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
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