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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.""
Man, I wish I could get a job making untestable hypotheses, and talking in stunningly vague terms about a vast morass of unrelated ideas.
But I don't want to be a futurist, and I don't have the time to study for the priesthood.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Meme is definately not synonymous with "theme", meme being defined as a piece of information passed on through the generations. I wouldn't say "How to build a brain" is a very memetic idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
I always get confused by Kurzweil reader. My mother who is blind had a device that would scan and read books for her years ago. It was called a Kurzweil. So when I hear Kurzweil reader...
I wonder if there is a pun in there somewhere? I'll have to read some of this stuff and find out.
Ray has got it nailed. It's interesting how much agreement there is anymore on future technology predictions. Only a few decades ago, predictions were all over the place: flying cars, nuclear power plants in every home, etc. But lately it seems that most people agree on the basics: man and machine will merge in some fashion, biotech will begin to cure aging, etc. The details are still very fuzzy, but it's interesting that Ray can bring these pieces together in a way that is not that far away from mainstream thought.
What's the Other Slashdot Effect?
Kurzweil was 12 in 1960. I hardly think programming your modern TRS-80 is quite the same as programming a behemoth from 1960.
Not to mention that you spelled "genius" with one o too many. I think that pretty much disqualifies you.
If you saw Pink Floyd's rather marvellous performance at Live 8 the other day, you'll have seen Rick Wright playing a Kurzweil keyboard. That's the same Kurzweil too.
http://savingiceland.org
Futurists are just like science fiction writers, except instead of being entertaining by combining prognostication with insight into the human condition (cyberpunk) or appealing to our mythological archetypes (space opera), futurism is entertaining by making you laugh in either pity or amazement at their naivete. So they're all doing their part to make the world a better place...unlike priests.
From Vintage Synth Explorer's Kurzweil K250 page:
Check out the rest of the range: http://www.vintagesynth.com/kurzweil/
You are entirely misunderstanding Kurtzweil if you think him a militant or a fascist. Kurtzweil talks about inevitability. Humans advance knowledge. Nothing short of some sort of anti-technology fascism is going to halt humans from advancing knowledge. Certain societies might choose to abstain in fear of a 'trans human' era, but unless those societies are willing to wipe out societies that choose not to abstain, there is an inevitability to Kurtzweil's line of reasoning.
Kurtzweil's line of reasoning is simple. As we amass more knowledge, the speed at which we amass knowledge grows greater. Further, he says we will come to a time when we build something that can begin to produce its own knowledge, and that this thing will create a singularity. That is to say that once we have machines that can amass knowledge and improve on themselves with that knowledge, technology will explode so rapidly compared to today that you can't even begin to comprehend life in this post singularity world. Such a technological singularity could appear so quickly that it might be that no one knows it happened until after the fact.
A lot of futurists believe all of the above. They argue against a human centric world as seen in most sci-fi. The idea of a crew of a few thousand running a ship as seen in Star Trek is silly to them because they argue AI will one day be able to do it better. I personally tend to agree.
What might be rankling you is Kurtzweil's take on whether or not having humanity eclipsed is a bad thing. Kurtzweil argues that humanity's eclipse is all but inevitable, but not necessarily a bad thing. People tend to take a dim view at having one's species wiped out, or at least rendered inconsequential. Kurtzweil argues that perhaps this eclipsing won't be such a bad thing. While having humans wiped out might be one possibility, a Garden of Eden created by appreciative creations might be another, as could the possibility of merging/joining with said creations.
A Garden of Eden to play in for as long as I desire or transcending to a higher plane of existence doesn't sound all that bad in my eyes.
Kurtzweil isn't a militant technologist. He is an optimist. Could you argue his optimism is naive? Sure. I personally take it as a welcome change. We have a morbid view of the future some times, especially in a future where humans have been eclipsed. It seems like everyone argues for a Terminator/Matrix style future where it has to be man Vs machine. Kurtzweil just offers up a little optimism that the future might not be all that bad and that it might be man with machine, or man carrying on merrily while machine goes off and does whatever.
This is the same guy that does "live" performances as "Ramona", his virtual 22-year old female rock star alter-ego, complete with motion-tracking and voice-transformation. And he doesn't think that there is anything weird about that. In fact, he says that in the future, everyone will do that kind of thing.
I'm just saying, grains of salt....
Good thing the essays are 2yrs old: http://web.archive.org/web/20031002224057/http://w ww.kurzweilai.net/RayKurzweilReader.pdf
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.
With all the free web servies out there, I don't understand why nobody bothered to upload this PDF to one of them. I've uploaded it to rapidshare. Follow the directions:
That should be good for at least 30 days.
GMD
watch this
On the topic of downloadable literature about rapidly-accelerating technology, Charlie Stross's newest novel is available for free download. Here's the relevant info (from another one of my slashdot submission attempts):
Programmer-novelist and Hugo nominee Charles Stross has gotten permission from his publishers to make his newest novel, Accelerando, available as a free download in several formats. As described by one reviewer: 'Accelerando fast forwards a not-so-average family through three generations and into a future in which humans seem far more alien than any critters from outer space. With heart, humor and extreme technophilia, Stross embarks on a voyage that unwires humanity and rewires readers to experience the Singularity. As the novel can be somewhat dense in novel technical ideas, I've started a Technical Companion on wikibooks to help provide more information on the relevant concepts.