Books – Ray Kurzweil’s “The Age of Spiritual Machines”
by chris ~ May 11th, 2009. Filed under: Books.
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil
My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Ray Kurzweil has been accused by some as being incredibly optimistic in his vision for the future of humanity and the computer’s that we’ve created. His predictions, however, have an uncanny way of coming to pass, at least in large part. Spiritual Machines was written in 1999 and speaks of the advances that computers will make in the twenty-first century.
Now, a decade later, it is possible to look at the first of Kurzweil’s predictions, helpfully listed out in a chapter labeled “2009″ and evaluate them. He missed the mark, badly, on a few things — we’ve not yet reached a point where most books are consumed electronically, nor do we interface with out computers mostly through voice — but he is more often right than wrong, and even when the predictions fall short, it’s usually in a way that leaves the reader saying “well, not YET” … these things will come, they’ve just been a little slower in getting here than predicted.
Kurzweil is an unapologetic transhumanist – a person who believes that mankind can and should continue the evolutionary process through voluntarily seeking to “upgrade” his own body via technology. Whether this is done by re-engineering cells, creating remedies to sickness at the DNA level, inventing nanobots, or digitizing the human conscience and moving it to a machine reality seems to matter less to Kurzweil than that we continue to pursue all evolutionary options. Indeed, he would likely argue that we not only must force this self-evolution, but that we are incapable of NOT doing it. Even should our machines rise up, Terminator-like, and destroy us all, Kurzweil would still view this only as another evolutionary process. After all, was it not Homo Sapiens’ superior intelligence and technology which allowed us to beat out the other human variants, such as the neanderthal?
The Age of Spiritual Machines is an absolutely fascinating book even if you think Kurzweil’s a crackpot. I don’t. I share the belief that he’s an optimist, and that some of the predictions he makes won’t come fully to pass, or happen as quickly. Still, I feel that he is able to look at the future with an unflinching eye and, drawing from a wide variety of reputable sources (the footnotes in the book are so voluminous that they take up an entire chapter unto themselves), make many compelling statements about what humankind’s ever-advancing technological capabilities may bring.
This was by a wide margin the best book I’ve read so far this year, and one of the best of the last several years.
