At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of it genetic legacy and achieves
inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity.
For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most
respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his class The Age of Spiritual Machine, he presented the daring argument that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, computers would rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now, in The Singularity Is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations.
The merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend out biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will
be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will. In practical terms, human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will be stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved.
Nanotechnology will make it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble problem.
While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development. As such, it offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of the centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
ERIC DREXLER: ...I don't know, Ray. I'm pessimistic on the prospects for picotechnology. With the stable particles we know of, I don't see how there can be picoscale structure without the enormous pressures found in a collapsed star—a white dwarf or a neutron star—and then you would get a solid chunk of stuff like a metal, but a million times denser. This doesn't seem very useful, even if it were possible to make it in our solar system. If physics included a stable particle like an electron but a hundred times more massive, it would be a different story, but we don't know of one.
RAY: We manipulate subatomic particles today with accelerators that fall significantly short of the conditions in a neutron star. Moreover, we manipulate subatomic particles such as electrons today with tabletop devices. Scientists recently captured and stopped a photon dead in its tracks.
ERIC: Yes, but what kind of manipulation? If we count manipulating small particles, then all technology is already picotechnology, because all matter is made of subatomic particles. Smashing particles together in accelerators produces debris, not machines or circuits.
Ray Kurzweil
The Singularity Is Near
WHEN HUMANS TRANSCEND BIOLOGY