Vinge's prescient, extraordinary notion of a (moderately)imminent technological singularity led me to research and write the first full popular science book on the topic, THE SPIKE, which came out in Australia in 1997. It was quite unnerving to see how many of my examples needed to be updated, due to the wind of Moore's Law, a scant four years later when I prepared the 2001 US edition. (Anyone interested can find links at http://www.thespike.addr.com , including a long article on different possible paths to a singularity and some of the obstacles we might meet.) I'm rather looking forward to reading Ray Kurzweil's THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR. Meanwhile, though, THE SPIKE is even nearer...:)
Damien Broderick, Melbourne, Australia
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Vinge's prescient, extraordinary notion of a (moderately)imminent technological singularity led me to research and write the first full popular science book on the topic, THE SPIKE, which came out in Australia in 1997. It was quite unnerving to see how many of my examples needed to be updated, due to the wind of Moore's Law, a scant four years later when I prepared the 2001 US edition. (Anyone interested can find links at http://www.thespike.addr.com , including a long article on different possible paths to a singularity and some of the obstacles we might meet.) I'm rather looking forward to reading Ray Kurzweil's THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR. Meanwhile, though, THE SPIKE is even nearer... :)
Damien Broderick, Melbourne, Australia