Well, dang.

When I saw some of Kurzweil’s introductory text telling me that not only will non-biological intelligence exceed that of a human’s brain, but that of all human brains computational power together; while bringing us all to more human-than-ever planes of existence, I was hoping that by the end of the book I would be relieved of my Bill Joy “The future doesn’t need us” bleak skepticism. There is even an frontspiece Bill Joy blurb for the book that kinda tips his hat in that direction.

I think what you’ve provided is the spoiler that by the end of the book I may have no more insight into my personal questions than I am starting with. Phoey.

And sure, the rate of change isn’t where I have an argument, it’s the implication of that change for computing and humanity that I take issue with. The ‘singularity’ won’t happen in isolation from other forces, so extrapolating what it means or even that it will model the mind’s capacity is where I part company.

I know how the marketing gits and other modern jackasses dogpile on the words-of-the-day (like that worthless ‘carbon footprint’ googles hype) and thus ‘singularity’ is yet another term tossed out continually.

Yet so far in my reading Kurzweil is helping to frame the kinds and rates of changes going on around us to illuminate what is not intuitive or perceivable from our perspective within the system.

Maybe take a look at the book, or excerpts he makes available, or interviews he’s done (I got hooked via the one on NPR.org, you can also see him talk about it and give a thumbnail overview on TED.com).

seeing how changes are happening exponentially really juices the imagination when asking where will Pais and I be in a few years…