I recently finished Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity is Near. Although I'm not sure I buy all his arguments, I can say no book since Chaos has so profoundly changed the way I view the world. What is the singularity, you may ask. Here's Kurzweil's definition:

I'm not qualified to judge whether such a singularity is possible nor whether if such a thing really is possible whether it will arrive as soon as Kurzweil predicts--sometime in the next 30 years or so. However, I do think Kurzweil is off base on some of his assumptions should such a singularity arrive. For example, he predicts poverty will be ended. This is nonsense. What he really means is that poverty as we know it today will no longer exist. Most people in the developed world don't experience poverty the way someone did 20o years ago. A poor man from 1910 would love theimpoverishmentt of many of today's poor--to have an automobile, television, radio and all the other modern amenities, or at least many of them. Similarly, in the future, whether it's 30 years from now or 200, there will still be poor people in the world but today's poor might envy the conditions of our future poor.

Where I think Kurzweil is right is that technology will continue to make rapid gains and continue to transform our societies in very profound ways. In many ways, our policy makers are fighting the last war, whether it is in transportation or pollution. We need to start thinking about what our world will look like 10, 20 and 30 years from now with the new technologies on the horizon.

Kurzweil also gives short shrift to the possibility of humans preventing some of these technology breakthroughs by destroying ourselves first. Kurzweil claims that technological progress is expanding exponentially and has done so through economic, political and military crisis over the centuries. But, it is possible that today's and tomorrow's crisis will be of a different magnitude. The great thing about much of our current technology is it empowers the individual. But this is its great risk too. A fundamentalist of whatever stripe will have the power in the future to cause far more damage than he or she can today or yesterday.

If the singularity occurs, if man becomes non-biological, during the run up to this event I would guess that this will cause a severe crisis among the religious fundamentalists among us (and among the devoutly Luddite), and not just those in Islam but in other religions too. They will see their world coming to an end and will not go quietly. Kurzweil talks about the defenses we will need to erect against those who wish ill will with the new powerful technology in their grasp. How this defense will work will be one of the great debates of our time.

I'll have much more to say on this intriguing book later this month.