“Anyone can grasp Mr. Kurzweil’s main idea: that mankind’s
technological knowledge has been snowballing, with dizzying
prospects for the future. The basics are clearly expressed. But for
those more knowledgeable and inquisitive, the author argues his
case in fascinating detail . . . . The Singularity Is
Near is startling in scope and bravado.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Filled with imaginative, scientifically grounded speculation . . .
. The Singularity Is Near is worth reading just for its
wealth of information, all lucidly presented . . . . [It’s] an
important book. Not everything that Kurzweil predicts may come to
pass, but a lot of it will, and even if you don’t agree with
everything he says, it’s all worth paying attention to.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“[An] exhilarating and terrifyingly deep look at where we are
headed as a species . . . . Mr. Kurzweil is a brilliant scientist
and futurist, and he makes a compelling and, indeed, a very moving
case for his view of the future.”
—The New York Sun
“Compelling.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Kurzweil links a projected ascendance of artificial intelligence
to the future of the evolutionary process itself. The result is
both frightening and enlightening . . . . The Singularity Is
Near is a kind of encyclopedic map of what Bill Gates once
called ‘the road ahead.’”
—The Oregonian
“A clear-eyed, sharply-focused vision of the not-so-distant
future.”
—The Baltimore Sun
“This book offers three things that will make it a seminal
document. 1) It brokers a new idea, not widely known, 2) The idea
is about as big as you can get: the Singularity—all the change in
the last million years will be superceded by the change in the next
five minutes, and 3) It is an idea that demands informed response.
The book’s claims are so footnoted, documented, graphed, argued,
and plausible in small detail, that it requires the equal in
response. Yet its claims are so outrageous that if true, it would
mean . . . well . . . the end of the world as we know it, and the
beginning of utopia. Ray Kurzweil has taken all the strands of the
Singularity meme circulating in the last decades and has united
them into a single tome which he has nailed on our front door. I
suspect this will be one of the most cited books of the decade.
Like Paul Ehrlich’s upsetting 1972 book Population Bomb, fan
or foe, it’s the wave at epicenter you have to start with.”
—Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired
“Really, really out there. Delightfully so.”
—Businessweek.com
“Stunning, utopian vision of the near future when machine
intelligence outpaces the biological brain and what things may look
like when that happens . . . . Approachable and engaging.”
—the unofficial Microsoft blog
“One of the most important thinkers of our time, Kurzweil has
followed up his earlier works . . . with a work of startling
breadth and audacious scope.”
—newmediamusings.com
“An attractive picture of a plausible future.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Kurzweil is a true scientist—a large-minded one at that . . . .
What’s arresting isn’t the degree to which Kurzweil’s heady and
bracing vision fails to convince—given the scope of his
projections, that’s inevitable—but the degree to which it seems
downright plausible.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[T]hroughout this tour de force of boundless technological
optimism, one is impressed by the author’s adamantine intellectual
integrity . . . . If you are at all interested in the evolution of
technology in this century and its consequences for the humans who
are creating it, this is certainly a book you should read.”
—John Walker, inventor of Autodesk, in Fourmilab Change Log
“Ray Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future of
artificial intelligence. His intriguing new book envisions a future
in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast
that they enable humanity to transcend its biological
limitations—transforming our lives in ways we can’t yet
imagine.”
—Bill Gates
“If you have ever wondered about the nature and impact of the next
profound discontinuities that will fundamentally change the way we
live, work, and perceive our world, read this book.
Kurzweil’s Singularity is a tour de force, imagining the
unimaginable and eloquently exploring the coming disruptive events
that will alter our fundamental perspectives as significantly as
did electricity and the computer.”
—Dean Kamen, recipient of the National Medal of
Technology, physicist, and inventor of the first wearable
insulin pump, the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine, the
IBOT Mobility System, and the Segway Human Transporter
“One of our leading AI practitioners, Ray Kurzweil, has once again
created a ‘must read’ book for anyone interested in the future of
science, the social impact of technology, and indeed the future of
our species. His thought-provoking book envisages a future in which
we transcend our biological limitations, while making a compelling
case that a human civilization with superhuman capabilities is
closer at hand than most people realize.”
—Raj Reddy, founding director of the Robotics Institute
at Carnegie Mellon University and recipient of the Turing
Award from the Association for Computing Machinery
“Ray’s optimistic book well merits both reading and thoughtful
response. For those like myself whose views differ from Ray’s on
the balance of promise and peril, The Singularity Is
Near is a clear call for a continuing dialogue to address the
greater concerns arising from these accelerating
possibilities.”
—Bill Joy, cofounder and former chief scientist, Sun Microsystems
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