Penguin Books, 2000 — 400 p.
Ray Kurzweil is the inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era, an international authority on artificial intelligence, and one of our greatest living visionaries. Now he offers a framework for envisioning the twenty-first century-an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live. Kurzweil's prophetic blueprint for the future takes us through the advances that inexorably result in computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain by the year 2020 (with human-level capabilities not far behind); in relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers; and in information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways. Optimistic and challenging, thought-provoking and engaging, The Age of Spiritual Machines is the ultimate guide on our road into the next century.
A Note to the Reader
Prologue: An Inexorable Emergence
Probing the PastThe Law of Time and Chaos
The Intelligence of Evolution
Of Mind and Machines
A New Form of Intelligence on Earth
Context and Knowledge
Preparing the PresentBuilding New Brains.
.And Bodies
1999
To Face the Future2009
2019
2029
2099
Epilogue: The Rest of the Universe Revisited
Notes
Suggested Readings
Web Links