Reviews
How much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us in smarts? If so, we'd better pull the plug right now, because if Ray Kurzweil is right we've only got until about 2020 before computers outpace the human brain in computational power. Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of The Age of Intelligent Machines, shows that technological evolution moves at an exponential pace. Further, he asserts, in a sort of swirling postulate, time speeds up as order increases, and vice versa. He calls this the "Law of Time and Chaos," and it means that although entropy is slowing the stream of time down for the universe overall, and thus vastly increasing the amount of time between major events, in the eddy of technological evolution the exact opposite is happening, and events will soon be coming faster and more furiously. This means that we'd better figure out how to deal with conscious machines as soon as possible--they'll soon not only be able to beat us at chess, but also likely demand civil rights, and might at last realize the very human dream of immortality.

The Age of Spiritual Machines is compelling and accessible, and not necessarily best read from front to back--it's less heavily historical if you jump around (Kurzweil encourages this). Much of the content of the book lays the groundwork to justify Kurzweil's timeline, providing an engaging primer on the philosophical and technological ideas behind the study of consciousness. Instead of being a gee-whiz futurist manifesto, Spiritual Machines reads like a history of the future, without too much science fiction dystopianism. Instead, Kurzweil shows us the logical outgrowths of current trends, with all their attendant possibilities. This is the book we'll turn to when our computers first say "hello." --Therese Littleton


From Publishers Weekly
According to the law of accelerating returns, explains futurist Kurzweil (The Age of Intelligent Machines), technological gains are made at an exponential rate. In his utopian vision of the 21st century, our lives will change not merely incrementally but fundamentally. The author is the inventor of reading and speech-recognition machines, among other technologies, but he isn't much of a writer. Using clunky prose and an awkward dialogue with a woman from the future, he sets up the history of evolution and technology and then offers a whirlwind tour through the next 100 years. Along the way, he makes some bizarre predictions. If Kurzweil has it right, in the next few decades humans will download books directly into their brains, run off with virtual secretaries and exist "as software," as we become more like computers and computers become more like us. Other projections?e.g., that most diseases will be reversible or preventable?are less strange but seem similarly Panglossian. Still others are more realizable: human-embedded computers will track the location of practically anyone, at any time. More problematic is Kurzweil's self-congratulatory tone. Still, by addressing (if not quite satisfactorily) the overpowering distinction between intelligence and consciousness, and by addressing the difference between a giant database and an intuitive machine, this book serves as a very provocative, if not very persuasive, view of the future from a man who has studied and shaped it. B&w illustrations. Agent, Loretta Barrett; foreign rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Italy and Spain; simultaneous Penguin audio; author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
With the coming of the millennium, there is no shortage of predictions about what the next century will hold. Inventor, computer scientist, and futurist Kurzweil (The Age of Intelligent Machines, LJ 6/1/91) has produced a vision of the 21st century in which he predicts that a $1000 personal computer will match the computing speed and capacity of the human brain by around the year 2020. But Kurzweil does more than simply prognosticate about the future?he provides a blueprint for the next stage of human evolution, in which we will begin to develop computers more intelligent than ourselves. Then we must ask ourselves whether these new thinking machines are indeed conscious entities. This superb work is a thoughtful melding of technology, philosophy, ethics, and humanism. Highly recommended.-?Joe J. Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., ChicagoCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Collin McGinn
His book ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers... neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test, brain scanning... chess-playing programs, the Internet--the whole world of information technology past, present, and future. This is a book for computer enthusiasts, science fiction writers in search of cutting-edge themes, and anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.


From AudioFile
Reading the entrails of artificial intelligence and molecular biology, inventor Kurtzweil here posits a twenty-first century of sentient (a word he misuses) machines so sophisticated that they gain a soul (a word he avoids, though it is what he means). The great amount of multisyllabic techno-babble compounds problems for his narrator. How is Alan Sklar going to make these swampy phrases clear and still keep an eye on the author's trajectory? Sklar opts for the industrial film voice-over approach. Going phrase by phrase, he lets the threads of thought fend for themselves. While admirably smoothing out the rough spots, he soon grows dull for want of attention to the book's architecture. Y.R. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
What will the world look like when computers are smarter than their owners? Kurzweil, the brains behind some of today's most brilliant machines, offers his insights. Kurzweil (The Age of Intelligent Machines, not reviewed) posits that technological progress moves at exponential rates. If we apply that standard to the future of computer evolution, another 20 years or so will give us machines with as much memory and intelligence as ourselves. This projection involves a certain faith in as yet unforeseeable technical breakthroughs. There is no obvious way to reduce the size of an electrical circuit beyond a few atoms' width, for examplebut the speed of circuits is a function of their size. Kurzweil gets around this limit (known in the computer industry as Moore's Law) by suggesting a relationship between the pace of time and the degree of chaos in a system; as order increases, the interval between meaningful events decreases. In other words, a more highly evolved system will continue to evolve at increasing speed. While this seems more a matter of faith than an inevitable law of nature, the history of technology (as Kurzweil summarizes it) seems to bear out the relationship. He extrapolates the future of computer technology, offering both a detailed time line and imaginary dialogues with a fully intelligent computer from a hundred years in our future. (This sort of imaginative exercise inevitably partakes to some degree of science fiction.) The book's deliberately nonlinear organization offers a variety of paths through the subject matter, as well, and Kurzweil encourages the reader to take whichever approach is attractive. While much of the material (Turing tests, AI research) will be familiar to readers who have followed the growth of computer science, Kurzweil's broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist. Heavy going in spots, but an extremely provocative glimpse of what the next few decades may well hold. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Ray Kurzweil, called a "restless genius" by The Wall Street Journal, is responsible for some of the most compelling technology of our era. The brains behind the Kurzweil Reading Machine (which helps Stevie Wonder read his mail), the Kurzweil synthesizer, and the voice-recognition program that appears on Windows 98, he is also a formidable thinker who a decade ago predicted the emergence of the World Wide Web and that a computer would beat the world chess champion. Finally, someone with the authority to speak about the future also has the courage and imagination to do so. The Age of Spiritual Machines is no list of predictions but a framework for envisioning the 21st century in which one advance or invention leads inexorably to another. After establishing that technology is growing exponentially, Kurzweil forecasts that computers will exceed the memory capacity and computing speed of the human brain by 2020, with the other attributes of human intelligence not far behind. By that time paraplegics will be able to walk by using a combination of nerve stimulation and robotic devices. You will be able to choose the personality of your automated computer assistant, who will conduct business on your behalf with other automated personalities. A mere nine years later, you will be able to enhance your intelligence with neural implants. The upshot is that human identity will be called into question as never before, as a billion years of evolution are superseded in a mere hundred by machine technology that we ourselves have created. We will become cyborgs, but what will computers become?

SYNOPSIS

The most relevant conclusion to draw from the long list of honorary degrees and professional awards, the praise by colleagues and the media, is that Ray Kurzweil is a smart man who people listen to. The Age of Spiritual Machines is his latest effort to explore the future of technology, a future he sees filled with machines as intelligent as their owners.

FROM THE CRITICS

Bill Carmada

In 10 years, your personal computer will perform a trillion calculations per second, and supercomputers will have the raw computing power, if not the software, of the human brain...

In 20 years, scientists will have largely reverse-engineered the brain, and all-encompassing virtual tactile environments will allow you to do virtually anything with anyone, no matter where they are...

In 30 years, 99% of the intelligence on earth will be artificial, human cognition will have been ported to machines, and neural implants will enhance "real" humans... In 50 to 100 years, few human intelligences will still depend on carbon-based organisms, and most "people" will have merged with their computational assistants. In the process, they will absorb expansive galaxies of unparalleld knowledge and insight.

Bottom line: if you eat right and avoid bungee jumping, you've got a shot at living forever. Of course, you'll be living on the "net," with billions of other minds, all operating at speeds incomprehensibly faster than neurons fire and grey matter thinks. And you'd better remember to keep backups of yourself!

Whose predictions are these, anyhow? Just Ray Kurzweil's, the "restless genius" (Wall Street Journal's words) who's created the first reading machines, text-to-speech machines, commercial speech recognition systems, breakthrough music synthesizers-one revolution after another. Over 30 years-in his books, and in his work-he's been right about the future repeatedly. And his newest book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, is simply breathtaking.

Kurzweil shows just how surrounded you are by artificial intelligence right now. He works through the implications of today's research into massively parallel neural network computers, optical, molecular and quantum computing, nanotubes, evolutionary algorithms, brain scanning, and more. Along the way, he romps through the history of the universe, the nature of consciousness, the future of space exploration, why the Unabomber Manifesto "makes a compelling case" about technology's risks (if not the alternatives), and plenty more.

Best of all, through imaginary conversations with a resident of the future, he gives you a sense of what the 21st century will feel like. If you're planning to live there, read this book!

Library Journal

A heavyweight in the computer world who for several years wrote a column for Library Journal called "The Futurecast," Kurzweil predicts that computers will outstrip human intelligence by 2020.

Paul Bennett

...[M]akes the convincing case that...by the end of the next century our species should...be merged with its technology....Most of his predictions are based on the law of accelerting returns....Kurzweil tackles some of the moral and philosophical issues furrounding this steady march forward...."For now, it's enough just to ask the right questions," [Kurzweil says].
-- Wired

Colin McGinn

...Kurzweil is more philosophically sensitive, and hence cautious, in his claims for computer consciousness....ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers...the whole world of information technology past, present and future...This is a book for computer enthusiasts, science fiction writers in search of cutting-edge themes and anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.
-- The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

What will the world look like when computers are smarter than their owners? Kurzweil, the brains behind some of today's most brilliant machines, offers his insights.

Kurzweil (The Age of Intelligent Machines) posits that technological progress moves at exponential rates. If we apply that standard to the future of computer evolution, another 20 years or so will give us machines with as much memory and intelligence as ourselves. This projection involves a certain faith in as yet unforeseeable technical breakthroughs. There is no obvious way to reduce the size of an electrical circuit beyond a few atoms' width, for example-but the speed of circuits is a function of their size. Kurzweil gets around this limit (known in the computer industry as Moore's Law) by suggesting a relationship between the pace of time and the degree of chaos in a system; as order increases, the interval between meaningful events decreases. In other words, a more highly evolved system will continue to evolve at increasing speed. While this seems more a matter of faith than an inevitable law of nature, the history of technology (as Kurzweil summarizes it) seems to bear out the relationship. He extrapolates the future of computer technology, offering both a detailed time line and imaginary dialogues with a fully intelligent computer from a hundred years in our future. (This sort of imaginative exercise inevitably partakes to some degree of science fiction.) The book's deliberately nonlinear organization offers a variety of paths through the subject matter, as well, and Kurzweil encourages the reader to take whichever approach is attractive. While much of the material (Turing tests, AI research) will be familiar to readers who have followed the growth of computer science, Kurzweil's broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist.

Heavy going in spots, but an extremely provocative glimpse of what the next few decades may well hold.