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Digital Cameras - Camcorders - The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $11.68
Your Save: $ 18.27 ( 61% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Viking
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.9
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Viking
Manufacturer: Viking
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 672
Publication Date: 2007-02-01
Publisher: Viking
Release Date: 2007-02-01
Studio: Viking
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Compelling
Comment: One of the most influential books I've ever read. Extremely well researched and very clearly written. I look at the next 20-30 years quite differently now as a result of reading this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking and Inspiring
Comment: A lot of facts about new developments in technologies coupled with inspiring ideas. Fun and exciting to read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Singularity
Comment:
As a true Futurist , Ray Kurzweil really reaches out to the future of knowledge and AI. His predictions that computers will increasingly take over routine human functions ends up where computers will outstrip humans by 2030. It sounds a bit daunting but fear not computers will be made safe until one named HAL comes along sometime later.
His chart showing how the rate of change is accellerating is right on target. Unfortunately global warming could fall into that prediction. As human knowledge doubles every few years now we can expect some really fantastic things to happen. Be ready for some real, excitement ahead. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
Customer Rating:
Summary: Insightful, but not gripping
Comment: Very interesting. Author has thought a lot about the topic -- not just surface-level hype that is so common nowadays. But the text drags in some chapters. I'd like to see around 100 of the 500 pages cut out.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Really makes you wonder
Comment: Brilliant is the best word to describe this work. Kurzweil has brought the future into something of a focus with this amazing look into the future. What really makes this work is that you can't 'see' exactly what the future will be even though he brings you further along than you have been. We can't see past the singularity - it will be something amazing - but we cannot truly conceive of what will be.
This will change the way you view our world and the future of our race.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is one of the best-known and controversial advocates for the role of machines in the future of humanity. In his latest, thrilling foray into the future, he envisions an event-the "singularity"-in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that our bodies and brains will merge with our machines. The Singularity Is Near portrays what life will be like after this event-a human-machine civilization where our experiences shift from real reality to virtual reality and where our intelligence becomes nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than unaided human intelligence. In practical terms, this means that human aging and pollution will be reversed, world hunger will be solved, and our bodies and environment transformed by nanotechnology to overcome the limitations of biology, including death. We will be able to create virtually any physical product just from information, resulting in radical wealth creation. In addition to outlining these fantastic changes, Kurzweil also considers their social and philosophical ramifications. With its radical but optimistic view of the course of human development, The Singularity Is Near is certain to be one of the most widely discussed and provocative books of 2005.
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