Kurzweil: The Cloud Will Expand Human Brain Capacity

Nerval's Lobster writes "Futurist and author Ray Kurzweil predicts the cloud will eventually do more than store our emails or feed us streaming movies on demand: it's going to help expand our brain capacity beyond its current limits. In a question-and-answer session following a speech to the DEMO technology conference in Santa Clara, California last week, Kurzweil described the human brain as impressive but limited in its capacity to hold information. 'By the time we're even 20, we've filled it up,' he said, adding that the only way to add information after that point is to 'repurpose our neocortex to learn something new.' (Computerworld has posted up the full video of the talk.) The solution to overcoming the brain's limitations, he added, involves 'basically expanding our brains into the cloud.'"

Comments

Re:I don't know if I'd say "filled it up"

[Anonymous Coward]

No. This is a common myth. We do infact use pretty much all of our brains.

Re:Reasons to be hesitant around Kurzweil

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Kurzweil seems to be following the proud tradition of very sharp people who have illustrious careers which then provide them the freedom to go a bit off the rails...

His speech and music synthesis stuff is solid. After he found nerd jesus and decided that he would live forever through the power of the internet...

Re:With apologies to Michio Kaku

[iluvcapra]

For interesting critiques on Kurzweil, you might...

... read Jaron Lanier, particularly his One Half of a Manifesto, where he makes a pretty compelling case that Kurzweil is a "cybernetic totalist" who's pretty much willing to throw away everything that makes human life worth living in order to prove that human nature is mechanistic and reducible to mere information.

... watch The Transcendent Man, a documentary on RK, which makes the pretty compelling case the Kurzweil is in fact obsessed with "the technological singularity" not because he has a rational basis for it to be, but because he's wracked with guilt for never having a good relationship with his father, and he's obsessed with the idea that the Singularity could not just prolong him forever, but resurrect his dead father as well. He's driven by the idea that death is abandonment or alienation and he's terrified of being abandoned, again.