GENIUS FORUMS

Has anyone read either of his popular works? His newest book is entitled, "Singularity Is Near - When Humans Transcend biology"

He also claims that solar technology is exponentially becoming more powerful and efficient in the same manner as the computer transistor movement. He goes on to claim that by the year 2020, when nanotech integrates with solar, humans should be able to supply much of the world's energy needs with solar by only absorbing only 1/10 000 of the solar radiation from the sun....

Does anyone know whether or not his numbers are accurate or is he being far too optimistic/idealistic?

Incredible and sensationalist Science fiction at best see for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of ... l_Machines

Solar tech is evolving rapidly, more and more so, but not Moore so.

12 years seems a little optimistic for solar to take over for the entire world, if that's what he's saying. And there are competitors/compliments like fusion and wind for us places with imaginative weather.

There's loads of different directions solar is going but this stuff in Spain is looking good though.

yes, sometimes Kurzell allows his imagination to run a little too wild, and some of his predications are unrealistic, but others seem very probable based on what technology has been, and his own history as an inventor/engineer.

I hope he and his fellows do find some forms of sucess for one and all of our species.


I hope you will accompany us in our enquiry, for many minds will help ensure that we do not fall into error.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_3nzkjQ ... re=related

What's the gist, then, that computers are growing exponentially in powers while people remain idiots? A bright future indeed! Pretty soon we won't even need people. Then the machines won't need people. The Matrix is coming. Where is the Terminator? Arnie, save us.

Here are some excerpts at Google Books

To me he sounds way to optimistic, almost fanatically so. He might as well be a babbling 'religious' technocrat at times. It's hard to doubt all the numbers he supplies and it's not difficult to suspect some kind of horizon approaching. But same could be said about world population, war mongering, suppression, anxieties, multimedia madness and mindlessness. All seemingly at the max of what seems humanly possible.

Perhaps the biggest problem I see with Kurzweil is his solution to the problem of the mind having to keep up with the speed and the pressure of life in the singularity lane. While on page 24 he talks about a radical "change in the nature of our ability to understand", it seems related to the ability to "merge with our technology".

But do we have time to build this technology to adapt our mind to the increasing pressure and demands? What if this technology is too far off to meet the demands? Then we need to change our minds right here and right now if we want to survive the onslaught of the singularity, the big slide.

Sometimes I also wonder if his approach to the singularity is not related to other puzzling phenomena, like the warming up of the Earth in cycles, which in turn could be related to magnetic cycles of the Sun, as some research indicated. A heating up of the mind as well as matter - producing so much produce, frenetic, feverish, a will to an end?

With his numbers and 'facts' Kurzwell seems to have created another image of a savior. Something which will somehow makes us wise, happy, and solve what are basically mental problems, karma built up through ages. It seems to me extremely naive to expect anything near to a solution from developments in technology. It sounds like the religion of progress, or as I call it: technocratism. A religion that fits the age it's born out but hardly relevant for any of the real problems at hand.