The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

The book repeats itslef. It's like reading the same book twice! 2010-03-05

Reviewer: Hugh Graham

The projections the author makes about the future are plausible but the time line is not. Undoubtedly there will be many unforseen difficulties in developing such
complex technology. I've seen old films from the 1950s that predicted flying cars for the turn of the century. As you know there are none. It's been over 40 years since we've landed on the moon and we still haven't been back. The mission to return to the moon was just canceled. Where are the exponential improvements there? Exponential improvements in computation don't automatically equate to exponential improvements in life. I imagine that inventors are overly optimistic. That trait allows them to embark on their projects while others would be stymied by a realistic appraisal of seemingly insurmountable difficulties.

One concern I have that wasn't addressed was what standards will be needed to upload our consciousness into the net. Will we eliminate the greed and fear portion of the brain's functionality. Can we just upload the "good" parts of humanity. Uploading pyschopathic personalities into more capable and powerful substrates would be disastrous, a sure way to create evil AI. This problem is probably centuries away though.

Also, the author constantly repeated himself. It was like reading the same book twice!

Even with its flaws it was still fun and educational.

Great! 2010-02-07

Reviewer: J. M. Vernooij

Very well written and documented, Kurzweil is obviously an insider. Gripping overview of things to come; sets you thinking for a while "who are we, people?" and 'what are we doing, really?". Makes you want to know more about other 'singularitans' and 'transhumanists'.

Don't get the Kindle edition! 2010-01-29

Reviewer: Christian Weisgerber

Do not bother reading The Singularity Is Near (Feb 1, 2007 edition) on the Kindle.

The book contains many graphs which are barely or not at all readable on the Kindle 2. (This may be better on the DX.) There are references to page numbers in the text which are entirely meaningless on the Kindle. There are misformatted numbers: ten to the minus n is not the same as ten to the n. But most importantly, about 40% of the volume of the book are notes. These appear as endnotes on the Kindle but they are NOT LINKED from the main text. You just get a number in superscript. The table of contents has a single entry point "Notes", not even separate ones for each chapter. You have to page through all the way. This makes it virtually impossible to look up the notes from the main text. Again, the notes are a major portion of the whole book.

The whole thing can serve as an example how NOT to prepare an e-book edition.

A logical argument for the end of the age 2009-10-20

Reviewer: VFTW

Kurzweil states: "our technology will match and then vastly
exceed the refinement and suppleness of what we regard as the best of human traits"...but what about the worst of human traits? Richard Swenson also argues that technology is going to exponentially change our world, but not just for good, but also for ill...read "Hurtling Toward Oblivion" for another perspective: [...]

SingularitySymposium.com review: The Singularitarian Bible 2009-09-30

Reviewer: Nikola Danaylov

It is probably not farfetched to say that "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" is the Singularitarian Bible. It is the one book that anyone interested (together with everyone not interested) in the Technological Singularity must read. No subject, field or issue is too big to fit within this book's subject matter. It examines the cutting edge research in and the implications thereof physics, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, computer science, biotechnology and genetics, artificial intelligence and robotics, nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, nuclear physics and quantum theory, evolutionary theory and sociology, astronomy and cosmology, economics, politics and philosophy.

This book is meticulously researched and contains over 100 pages of scientific notes and references. It also contains a whole chapter of criticisms which are addressed in detail by Ray Kurzweil. If it does have a weakness it has to be the fact that it is so conceptually and theoretically advanced, so breathtakingly far-sighted and so exhaustively precise in its most minute cutting-edge scientific detail that readers may find it at times hard to follow. (I know I did) At the same time the book is undoubtedly successful at communicating "the singularity is near" message to a broad non-scientific readership.