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Ray Kurzweil 2001-2003 essays Available as a PDF
prostoalex writes "The Ray Kurzweil Reader is a collection of essays by Ray Kurzweil on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, radical life extension, conscious machines, the promise and peril of technology, and other aspects of our future world. These essays, all published on KurzweilAI.net from 2001 to 2003, are now available as a PDF document for convenient downloading and offline reading. The 30 essays, organized in seven memes (such as "How to Build a Brain"), cover subjects ranging from a review of Matrix Reloaded to "The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine" and "Human Body Version 2.0.""
Kurzweil was 12 in 1960. I hardly think programming your modern TRS-80 is quite the same as programming a behemoth from 1960.
How about reading what the AC said two posts above yours and 5mn earlier?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
From his ability to program computers at only 12 years old
_ hardware#Second_generation_--_late_1950s_and_early _1960s
In response to all the slashdotters saying "That's lame, I started programming way before that," I guess that in itself isn't too impressive. Heck, I started programming when I was 8 myself. However, keep in mind that Kurzweil was born in 1948, which would mean that he started learning to program with the computers of 1960. I find that a little more impressive, although there's undoubtedly also slashdotters who learned to program at a similar age and time. I find them impressive too.
To get an idea of what computers were like in 1960:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing
The next major step in the history of computing was the invention of the transistor in 1947. This replaced the fragile and power hungry valves with a much smaller and more reliable component. Transistorized computers are normally referred to as 'Second Generation' and dominated the late 1950s and early 1960s. By using transistors and printed circuits a significant decrease in size and power consumption was achieved, along with an increase in reliability. For example, the vacuum tube based IBM 650 of 1954 weighed over 900 kg, the attached power supply weighed around 1350 kg and both were held in separate cabinets of roughly 1.5 meters by 0.9 meters by 1.8 meters. It cost $500,000 or could be leased for $3,500 a month. (Its drum memory was originally only 2000 ten-digit words, and required arcane programming for efficient computing. This type of hardware limitation was to dominate programming for decades afterward, until the evolution of a programming model which was more sympathetic to software development.) By contrast, the transistorized IBM 1620, which replaced the 650, was the size of an office desk. Second generation computers were still expensive and were primarily used by universities, governments, and large corporations.
In 1959 IBM shipped the transistor-based IBM 7090 mainframe and medium scale IBM 1401. The latter was designed around punch card input and proved a popular general purpose computer. Some 12,000 were shipped, making it the most successful machine in computer history at the time. It used a magnetic core memory of 4000 characters (later expanded to 16,000 characters). Many aspects of its design were based on the desire to replace punched card machines which were in wide use from the 1920s through the early 1970s.
In 1960 IBM shipped the smaller, transistor-based IBM 1620, originally with only punched paper tape, but soon upgraded to punch cards. It proved a popular scientific computer and about 2,000 were shipped. It used a magnetic core memory of up to 60,000 decimal digits.
Also in 1960, DEC launched the PDP-1 their first machine intended for use by technical staff in laboratories and for research.
I'm not trying to sell this guy's books for him, but...
If you want to read a book that will blow your f-ing mind, check out "The Age of Spiritual Machines", by Ray Kurzweil. I went around for a month with my head smoking after that one.