Kurzweil’s mind-blowing and optimistic vision of our future
The sheer volume of concepts and technologies Kurzweil introduces in his book in rapid succession will blow your mind — and his upbeat optimism is refreshing, especially for those of us who sometimes feel a little beaten down by all the dystopian views of technology in the news and in the fictional and expository volumes we consumed in the late-twentieth century. Aside from the optimism and concepts, there is also the argument Kurzweil constructs – backed by mounds of citations and calculations as evidence – that 2045 will be the year of the Singularity (Kurzweil, 2005, Chapter 3, location 2344). Two primary questions, then, are what is the Singularity and how can Kurzweil predict when it will occur?
The Singularity and its implications
Kurzweil hints at his definition of the Singularity in the subtitle of his book by noting the event which will mark its beginning, “When Humans Transcend Biology.” How humans will transcend biology and what will be the general form and nature of this transcendence, or Singularity, is specifically elaborated at a few junctures in the first four chapters. In the prologue, Kurzweil quickly begins sketching the form of the Singularity by envisioning “a future civilization whose intelligence vastly outstrips our own” in which humans have augmented their biological selves with the nonbiological and intelligent technology they have created. In addition, he states that his book is “the story of the destiny of the human-machine civilization, a destiny we have come to refer to as the Singularity” (Kurzweil, 2005, Prologue, locations 276, 313). After skimming only the prologue, one might conclude Kurzweil’s Singularity is nothing more than the glorified robotics embodied in any number of cinematic cyborgs and be done with it. In the first chapter, however, it becomes clear that understanding Kurzweil’s Singularity will not be so simple and filing the concept away as merely one more iteration of the Frankenstein – or humans versus their creations – plot, will not suffice.
In chapter one, Kurzweil constructs his foundation on the familiar concept of evolution and a quick survey of its major epochs, six epochs in Kurzweil’s view. Most people will not be surprised by the first four of Kurzweil’s epochs: 1) physics and chemistry, 2) biology and DNA, 3) brains, and 4) technology; but, for those who did not immediately grasp the significance of his theory he calls “the law of accelerating returns” in the prologue (Kurzweil, 2005, Prologue, location 295), the fifth epoch may surprise with its abrupt break from the glacial pace of past. In brief, the fifth epoch is the Singularity – or a stage in evolution – and Kurzweil’s book is the predictive analysis that yields the characteristics of that epoch and of the possible implications of those characteristics for humanity and the universe.
In the second paragraph of his first chapter, Kurzweil summarizes the nature of this imminent next phase of evolution (or the Singularity) as being so fast and so different that it will totally transform human existence, including our understanding of reality, our value systems, and our biological mortality. Since the changes will be so profound and even imagining them is so difficult for people – given that it is inherently difficult to comprehend a future state, the comprehension of which is prerequisite upon cumulative knowledge and experience one does not possess yet – Kurzweil goes so far as to introduce a term to describe those currently living humans who grasp the Singularity and its significance. He calls them “singularitarians” (Kurzweil, 2005, Chapter one, location 339). Here, it seems to me, Kurzweil is entertaining – perhaps ironically – a post-modern, intellectual cult of science and technology or of an exclusive futurist sub-culture of an enlightened intelligentsia.
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Countdown to 2045: Kurzweil’s argument and evidence
The primary premise of Kurzweil’s argument is the creation of technology by humans has fundamentally changed the pace of evolution. Whereas evolutionary epochs before human’s creation of technology can be measured in many millions of years (geological and biological epochs, for example), evolutionary epochs after human’s creation of technology can be measured in tens or hundreds of years (economic and technological epochs, for example). Kurzweil expresses this changed pace of evolution by describing two concepts of perspective he calls the “intuitive linear view” and the “historical exponential view” (Kurzweil, 2005, Chapter 3, location 390).
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