The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology Paperback – 4 July 2024

My heart sank when I got this book. An American book on science that had that many pages must be written by someone who got paid by how many times they were able to repeat themselves. This has been my experience with books much thinner than this. Yet I was quite wrong. There is very little repetition and it is all appropriate. The book is very well written with careful attention given to the order in which ideas are presented. It is an astonishingly wide ranging book and essential reading for anyone who is interested in where technology is taking us. How the author found time to write it, along with perfoming all his other duties beats me. He must be one hell of a guy!The only thing I take issue with him on, is... no I won't spoil it for you! You can make up your own mind. Just read it!

Ray Kurzweil isn't renowned for his authoring talents and is better known for his inventions. I remember many years ago owning a copy of Kerzweil's voice recognition program (I forget the exact title) and being impressed with its accuracy. Kerzweil is also renowned for his work in digital music and a vast array of other fields.In this book the author expands on his vision of the future as he sees it in the next 50 years. The main thrust of the book is that Moore's law is continuing and as such computing power is increasing exponentially (exponentials are a large part of this book). The premise that as computing power increases dramatically we will be able to create even more technology, with the aim to "uploading" ourselves into our computers. This at first seems like science fiction but be assured that the author looks at every detail and examines the feasibility of each stage of his premise. The results are startling, and I must admit give me a strange feeling in the gut of my stomach when I realised the full breadth of his suggestions.This book could be considered a sequel to the author's previous books, the Age of Intelligent Machines, and the Age of Spiritual Machines. However you don't need to have read these previous books to understand the concepts involved. A basic understanding of genetics and nanotechnology would help, but are not required.I don't know if the authors predictions will come to pass (And I honestly hope they do!) but I would recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the future and who wants to prepare themselves in advance.

Frightening but compelling reading .

Exceptional book and fantastic service delivery from Amazon.

HE THICCBIG BRAIN BOOKgenerally really cool like covers many interesting thingsIt's very thicc, thiccest book I have

Ray writes eloquently and passionately about his predictions for a Utopian future. I say passionately but I could easily say dogmatically but he has such force of conviction that would be a tad churlish.I believe books should challenge and provoke a reaction. This one certainly did.The internal monologues felt like they were for those people who were not clever enough to grasp the long hand explanation and became increasingly self defeating for me.He has a brilliant grasp of his subject and i would imagine in person he is a tour de force as a speaker.For me however when he started to explain human 2.0 and 3.0 he lost some of his power. When the human organs have all been replaced bar the skin are we still human. The virtual reality sex model is hilarious and deeply troubling. If we can always have the object of our desires virtually,then Pandora'S box is well and truly open.How do real human relationships exist if both partners prefer a younger slimmer model in virtual reality.I did enjoy the read but i am not a Luddite but very wary of technology which allows me to live to 200.Lastly I wonder what will happen if when we start to get smarter and closer to the singularity if we will only find new and more troubling ways to hurt,cheat and murder one another?

If Kurzweil is wrong in his predictions and there is no technical revolution just around the corner, the worst that that can be said is that he has written an incredibly thought-provoking book that all intelligent people should read. But if he's right, all the human race is shortly to be either wiped out or made immortal. Of course, that just sounds like silly hype but if you've read the book and can say why it's hype please let me know.I for one can't see why Kurzweil's main predictions are wrong.

I enjoyed this book. The central concept is fascinating and retrospectively very plausible. The book is 10 years old and some but not all of its predictions for this decade have already happened.The extrapolation into the future starts to feel like the “culture” civilisation in an Iain M Banks Sci Fi novel. Difficult to know who got what ideas from who.Don’t know whether to be optimistic or terrified about the future. I’m nearly 50 years old, so I’ll definitely be taking my Statins, vitamins and blood pressure pills in the hope that I can “live long enough to to live forever”