Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

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Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

by: Ray Kurzweil

Topics include: exponentially quickening pace, neural implant technology, time interval between salient events, nanobot swarms, quantum decoherence, download knowledge, total touch, tactile environment, neural implants, connection calculations, simulated person, quantum computing, calculations per second, mind file, quantum computer, skill ladder, recursive search, destroy all copies, human neurons, virtual partners, evolutionary algorithms, virtual sex, computational technology, trillion connections

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Amazon.com 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., Chicago
Copyright 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. Wired, Paul Bennett
Of course, we've heard it all before. But what Kurzweil brings to the table is sobriety. While he exudes a boyish optimism, there is little of the booster's jargon in his book. Wired Magazine
"What Kurzweil brings to the table is sobriety... compelling predicitions and delicious presumption into into his fascinatic speculations about the future." Business 2.0
"The book is an ambitious blueprint for the future, mapping out the next century of technological evolution and exploring the moment when PCs will attain and then surpass the capabilities of the human brain." 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 -- an extremely provocative glimpse of what the next few decades may well hold." Boston Globe Book Review
"Kurzweil paints a tantalizing -- and sometimes terrifying -- portrait of a world where the line between humans and machines has become thoroughly blurred. Forbes Magazine
"Ray Kurzweil's book is a real stunner. He predicts that in the fairly near future people will be half-human, half-machine." San Francisco Chronicle
"The Age of Spiritual Machines will blow your mind. Kurzweil lays out a scenario that might seem like science fiction if it weren't coming from a proven entrepreneur." New York Times Book Review
"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." Book Info
Discusses the possibility of a computer exceeding the intelligence of humans and becoming a scientist being in their own right and blurring the distinction between man and machine. Softcover. DCL: Artificial Intelligence.

About the Author
Ray Kurzweil is a prize-winning author and scientist. He was named Inventor of the Year by MIT in 1988 and was awarded the Dickson Prize, Carnegie Mellon's top science prize, in 1994. He is the recipient of nine honorary doctorates and honors from two American presidents. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts. Excerpted from The Age of Spiritual Machines : When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil. Copyright 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved From the Introduction: Ray Kurzweil is one of the great scientists, inventors, and visionaries of the 20th Century. Dr. Kurzweil has spent a lifetime teaching computers how to act like human beings. He taught them to see, developing the first Charge Coupled Device (CCD) Flat Bed Scanner in 1975. He taught them to read, creating the first Omni-Font ("any" font) Optical Character Recognition software in 1976. He taught them to listen, with the first commercially marketed Large Vocabulary Speech Recognition Software in 1987. He taught them to speak, with the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind in 1976. And he taught them to sing, when in 1984 he developed the first music synthesizer capable of emulating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments so well that even professional musicians couldn't answer "Is it real or is it Kurzweil?" In 1990, Ray Kurzweil shook the world of computer science with the publication of his book, The Age of Intelligent Machines. What is going to happen, Kurzweil asked, when computers go beyond mere input/output formulas and begin to actually think for themselves? They will clobber the world chess champion by 1998, he predicted (this happened in 1997), and people will be able to visually navigate a global network of interconnected computers, he said (five years before the World Wide Web). Lauded as a visionary, the recipient of nine honorary doctorate degrees, honored by two U.S. Presidents, the "restless genius" that is Ray Kurzweil has dropped another bomb in the scientific community by asking the simple question, "What happens when machines exceed human intelligence in every measurable way?" The answer: We enter The Age of Spiritual Machines. That's right, machines that not only see and feel and speak and think, but machines that surpass human intelligence -- machines that have consciousness, their own agendas, and the ability to achieve their goals without human assistance. What will happen to us when evolution replaces us as the dominant species on the planet? This is not science fiction any longer, says Kurzweil. His new book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, is based on interdisciplinary research into state-of-the-art technology, laying a scientific foundation that supports his incredible predictions for the next century. The article, below, was written for us by Dr. Kurzweil as a summary of some of the major points in his book. Beneath the article, you'll find additional information about The Age of Spiritual Machines. Enjoy! An Epochal Event in the History of Life on Earth A threshold event will take place early in the Twenty-First century: the emergence of machines more intelligent than their creators. By 2019, a $1,000 computer will match the processing power of the human brain -- about 20 million billion calculations per second. Organizing these resources -- the "software" of intelligence -- will take us to 2029, by which time your average personal computer will be equivalent to a thousand human brains. Once a computer achieves a level of intelligence comparable to human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it. For one thing, computers can easily share their knowledge. If I learn French, or read War and Peace, I can't readily download that learning to you. You have to acquire that scholarship the same painstaking way that I did. But if one computer learns a skill or gains an insight, it can immediately share that wisdom with billions of other computers. So every computer can be a master of all human and machine acquired knowledge. Keep in mind that this is not an alien invasion of intelligent machines. It is emerging from within our human/machine civilization. There will not be a clear distinction between human and machine in the Twenty First century. First of all, we will be putting computers --neural implants -- directly into our brains. We've already started down this path. We have neural implants to counteract Parkinson's Disease and tremors from multiple sclerosis. We have cochlear implants that restore hearing to deaf individuals. Under development is a retina implant that will perform a similar function for blind individuals, basically replacing the visual processing circuits of the brain. A couple of weeks ago, scientists placed a chip in the brain of a paralyzed individual who can now control his environment directly from his brain. In the 2020s, neural implants will not be just for disabled people. Most of us will have neural implants to improve our sensory experiences, perception, memory, and logical thinking. These implants will also plug us in directly to the World Wide Web. This technology will enable us to have virtual reality experiences with other people -- or simulated people -- without requiring any equipment not already in our heads. And virtual reality will not be the crude experience that people are used to today. Virtual reality will be as realistic, detailed, and subtle as real reality. So instead of just phoning a friend, you can meet in a virtual French cafe in Paris, or stroll down a virtual Champs D'Elyse, and it will seem very real. People will be able to have any type of experience with anyone -- business, social, romantic, sexual -- regardless of physical proximity. One approach to designing intelligent computers will be to copy the human brain, so these machines will seem very human. And through nanotechnology, which is the ability to create physical objects atom by atom, they will have human-like -- albeit greatly enhanced -- bodies as well. Having human origins, they will claim to be human, and to have human feelings. And being immensely intelligent, they'll be very convincing when they tell us these things. We will also be able to scan a particular person -- let's say myself -- and record the exact state and position of every neurotransmitter, synapse, neural connection, and other relevant details, and then reinstantiate that information into a neural computer of sufficient capacity. The person that then emerges in the machine will think that he is (and had been) me. He will say "I was born in Queens, New York, went to college at MIT, stayed in Boston, walked into a scanner there, and woke up in the machine here. Hey, this technology really works." But wait. Is this really me? For one thing, old Ray (that's me) still exists. I'll still be here in my carbon-cell-based brain. Alas, I will have to sit back and watch the new Ray succeed in endeavors that I could only dream of.

Reviews:

Lacking depth sometimes, but still very interesting: Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines' is an intelligent look at what the future might be holding for us all. Like other similar titles - Visions by Michio Kaku comes to mind - Kurzweil tries to predict where science will take us. Unlike `Visions' however, this book is considerably more focused on computer technology and artificial intelligence, and I would only recommend it if you're not looking for a much broader answer to the question of where we are headed. Kurzweil never intended to cover other matters, and reading the Prologue will be enough to understand that most of the book will explore the rising of machine intelligence to a level that will surpass the capabilities of the human brain. Kurzweil starts by describing the exponential growth of computer power, Moore's Law, and transistor-based computing. The present and the future are described until quantum effects start becoming a problem and a completely new kind of technology becomes necessary (some alternatives are mentioned, Quantum computation is of course, mentioned). The book proceeds to more metaphysical subjects, and questions if we can create another intelligence form more intelligent than ourselves. Can the created exceed the creator? It will then proceed to cover consciousness and feelings; Kurzweil gets philosophical in what in my opinion is one of the book's weakest chapters The methods available to solve a wide range of intelligent problems (when combined with heavy doses of computation) will follow, in a chapter that covers subjects from recursive formulas to neural nets, and of course, enough space is dedicated to Alan Turing, the father of all modern computers. Part 2 starts with my favourite chapter of this title; Kurzweil discusses how evolution has found a way around the computational limitations of normal neural circuitry. And from nature's lessons we move to ideas about molecular computing harnessing the DNA molecule itself as a practical computing device, now a possibility under investigation. I wish I had this book last year when I was doing some research on general quantum computing for college, Kurzweil fully managed to transmit the impact that future developments in these areas might cause, and the problems that will be caused by ultra-fast parallel computation (especially with cryptography). The port of slow mammalian carbon-based neurons to speedier electronic and photonic equivalents is covered with simplicity, but convincingly. Next comes the problem of the body. A disembodied mind will quickly get depressed, no matter how powerful. So what kind of bodies should our machines have, or later on, what kind of bodies will they provide for themselves? Part 2 ends with a few thoughts on the array of tasks that are now performed by computers, lacking sense of humour, talent for small talk and other endearing qualities, but still vital for tasks that previously required human intelligence: How much do we depend on modern technology? If all the computers stopped functioning, would chaos rise? Is our world too based on technology and vulnerable to global disasters? After 2009, the book truly starts facing the future. You will be shown how extremely cheap and powerful (compared to today's standards) computers will be imbedded in clothing and jewellery, among other items, surrounding us completely. Virtual personalities start emerging, and Kurzweil dares to predict real time translating telephones and even human musicians jamming routinely with cybernetic musicians. Also interesting, I thought, is the possibility of some sort of neo-Luddite movement growing around this time. Next stage is 2019. By this time, Kurzweil believes that a $1k computing device will be approximately equal to the computational ability of the human brain. Computers should be almost invisible, and will be everywhere. 3D virtual reality will reach good quality levels, and VR displays are embedded in glasses and contacts lenses, providing a new interface (and the main interface) for communication with other persons (via the future version of the Web). Interaction with computers is made through gestures and 2-way natural language. A few thoughts on relationships with automated personalities end the chapter. By 2029, Kurzweil's predictions turn to direct neural pathways that somehow have perfected some soft of high-bandwidth connection to the human brain. Ultra fast learning -la-Neo from Matrix in less than 28 years? Kurzweil suspects so. Neural implants become widely available to enhance visual and auditory perception and interpretation, as well as memory and reasoning. People with physical problems and strongly helped by implants. Computers have "read" all available human literature and the discussion about legal rights of computers and what constitutes being human. Machines claim to be conscious. Around 2099, human thinking starts merging with the world of machine intelligence. There is no clear distinction between humans and computers. Most of the intelligences are not tied to a specific processing unit, but widely spread. This chapter's most interesting aspect is perhaps the discussion about software based humans, when compared to those still using carbon-based neurons. The use of neural implant technology provides enormous augmentation of human perceptual and cognitive abilities, creating some sort of division between first class and second-class humans. Kurzweil implies that those who do not utilize such "enhancements" will be unable to meaningfully participate in dialogues with those who do. Being alive no longer means what it used to mean. Life expectancy is no longer a viable term in relation to intelligent, machine-based intelligent beings. The books ends with a few thoughts on the fate of the whole universe, a part that is probably the weakest of the whole book, extremely pale when compared to Michio Kaku's "Visions" look. Kurzweil might do a good job describing a universe in which artificial intelligence and nanotechnology combine to bring longevity, but failed partially when discussing that longevity and the coming connections of computers with immortality, a subject that deserved a lot more attention and space in this book. Left me wanting more. You will find this book fascinating if you're particularly interested in what the future holds when it comes to computers. Kurzweil knows his science well and adding a bit of common sense and humour, is enough to result in a very enjoyable title. If the predictions turn to follow the expected timeline, well, frankly I don't care much, and I don't think it's very relevant to discuss it; Most of it will happen precisely as the author puts it, but it might take more or less time. This book is not complex, and has many references and notes; so even people with a poor background in computer science will be able to follow the author's ideas. Of course knowing what's behind it will make your experience a lot richer. You also get a decent glossary, very valuable if you're new to the subject. Overall, a good book, but lacking depth in some areas (especially machine based existence and immortality). Sometimes too over simplified. Still, check it out and see where we're heading. Combine it with Neuromancer, Visions and a few more technical titles and you will wish you could live 300 years...then again, maybe not. ;-)

A Scary and Wondrous Vision of the Near Future: "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil has really ruined Science Fiction for me. It's all so unimaginative, compared to what he thinks is really going to happen. Kurzweil's predictions for ten, twenty, and a hundred years into our future, if true, imply that the last generation of 'true' humans (MOSHs he calls us)is already walking on Earth. If he's right (and he's been right about a lot of things - M.I.T. named him the Inventor of the Year in 1988) and if I can hang on for another twenty years, I may never have to die. What's really scary about reading this book is that some of the things Kurzweil predicted while writing it in 1998 have already come true - ahead of his schedule - e.g. the deciphering of the human genome. And although he tries to be optimistic, he also appears to be very worried about our future on a world populated by bio-engineered viruses and rogue, self-replicating nanobots. If you're a poet or would like to test yourself to see if you can distinguish poetry written by a human from poetry written by a computer, be sure to visit Kurzweil's website [online]. Take his poetry 'Turing test' and download his free Cybernetic Poet software. Be sure to read this book, too. It will help prepare you for your very interesting post-MOSH future.

Lots of spirit, though not much of the metaphysical variety Although this book didn't really live up to expectations, I will at least say it provided an entertaining read. If you're already familiar with contemporary sci-fi you won't find too many new ideas here. A lot of the ground in this book has already been covered in works like "The Diamond Age" (Neal Stephenson - nanotech opus), "Neuromancer" (William Gibson - disembodied ID shifting), "Ender's Game" (Orson Scott Card - automated education) or "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer" (Phillip K. Dick - tricked out humans). Of course the main difference here is that Mr. Kurzweil is not a sci-fi author but a proven inventor and entrepeneur. He acknowledges the 'speculative non-fiction' aspects of the book but at times gets carried away with his predictions and occasionally sounds like a hokey traveling salesman. Throughout the book he claims some degree of expertise in such broad ranging interests as nanotechnology, neurology, interactive entertainment, visual arts, biology, anthropology, philosophy, ethics and sexuality. Granted the material draws on many of these disciplines but his arguments often come to conclusions that simply have no scientific basis. This book, published in 1999 suggested that our brains will be "scanned" in the near future. The concept sounds very Ghost-In-The-Shell and has about as much plausibility as a typical Japanese animation. An article appearing in the October 2004 issue of Discover asked the question, "Will anyone ever decode the human brain"? The author, much less optimistic than Kurweil noted that "No conceivable technology will be subtle enough to discern all the memories, emotions, and meanings aroused in us by our perceptions." He made this assumption based on the fleeting nature of the actual neurons in your brain that change and evolve rapidly every day. To equate this mush with bits and bytes, jpegs and mp3's, is a little naive and ridiculously optimistic. Hopefully it will happen someday, maybe even in our lifetime. Until then though, you'd be better off reading real fiction... This book's (almost) saving grace is Kurzweil himself. He's obviously having fun writing this book and presumably hopes to raise some eyebrows. Even when that comes off as legacy-building ("Remember - you read that here first!") it's oddly charming. Inserting himself into a dialogue with his fictitious creation "Molly" is at first obnoxious, condescending even, but by the end it's actually pretty amusing. That said, if you're holding out for some deep insight as to what a "spiritual machine" might be, I'll save you the trouble by telling you that the author's angle (in the two pages it's mentioned) is that spirituality basically boils down to biological phenomena. Sorry, that it. Apparently that was good enough for Mr. Data so it's also good enough Mr. Kurzweil. Computers will one day magically start loving - once they're smart enough of course. In the mean time, we can gloss over the fact that subjective AI is still a non entity in our world.

Is Transhumanity and Singularity for all of us?
Unless we kill ourselves off, or get squashed by a meteor first (splat!) I had little doubt that the Singularity would happen to humanity-eventually, somewhere deep into the distant future. Ray Kurzweil's 1999 book, Age of the Spiritual Machine blew me away. Ray, backing up his ideas with convincing arguments, made me realize that Singularity was no more than five decades away. Ray's new book, The Singularity is Near, just solidifies his arguments that some people alive today will live long enough to enter Singularity as transhumans housed in powerful (quantum) computers. Which ones however? The richest ones? Or "all" of us? This is a question Ray's new book, unfortunately, glosses over. Why am I slightly paranoid? As a former military officer who worked on space-based weapons, and a former econophysicist (financial engineer) who priced energy and weather derivatives for the greed driven energy markets, and as a current nuclear weapons physicist at Los Alamos, I've gotten to worrying about extreme wealth gradients and the control of super powerful and risky technologies. It seems to me, unless we start addressing the issue soon, that the super rich will be able to afford Singularity technology long before the rest of us, and that we may thus be left behind to whither away. Take invitro fertilization (IVF). It is very expensive, and few people can easily afford it. Now imagine, say 15 years from now, the exorbitant cost of tweaking IVF embryos with state-of-the-art gene science to produce offspring with significantly improved physical and mental capabilities. Only the richest rich-think of the millionaire space tourists-will be able to afford such cutting-edge science. Then what, except to fall further behind, will happen to our kids when they try to compete against souped-up humans for jobs? Unless we take a stand, the extreme wealth and power gradients that already exist today between us poor slobs and the billionaires will likely grow far worse. Beyond advanced IVF, will privileged "transhumans" sporting highly expensive advanced bio-nano technologies so exceed us, and use up planetary resources so fast that we, the rest of us poor slobs, will be made extinct? This is, after all, what we-the dominant species on Earth-are doing to tens of thousands of other "lesser" species. Fortunately, many people are thinking about the dangerous possibilities of ultra wealth gradients, and working hard to come up with solutions. To this end, to making sure that all of us will be included into transhumanity if we so choose, I recently moderated a UN Non-Government Org. (NGO) panel on the bioethics of advanced cloning; please look up the IHEU Appignani bioethics center web site. I also recently wrote a well received "strong" science fiction book ( Beyond Future Shock ISBN 1419609440 ) that explores the perils and promise of ethics, religion, wealth gradients and risky science and technology. To supplement the issues of ethics and wealth gradients as we approach Singularity, I also strongly recommend you pick up a copy of Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes in which he develops a plausible idea of "super" democracy so that we all may partake of Singularity science. Also, Google his radio show Changesurfer radio in which I and many other scientists, futurists, ethicists, philosophers, theologians and industry leaders share their thoughts on Singularity. Lastly, pick up a copy of Peter Turchin's wonderful book, War and Peace and War. (See my review of this great work on Amazon.) In summary, Kurzweil's new book does a great job in letting a mass audience know about just how shockingly close we are to the Singularity: just between three to five decades, and I strongly recommend it. But while you read it, think about ethics and the competitive and warlike history of humanity, and the extreme wealth gradients between the billionaires and ourselves. We need to address "Singularity" science now, before we are swallowed up. If we do things right, I am hopeful that we might likely end up in Kurzweil's utopia without first having ripped ourselves a new one.