Thought some of you might find this interesting, at least...
"DNA-based evolution will eventually have to be abandoned," declares Ray Kurzweil, one of the great inventors, scientisits, and visionaries of the 20th Century, in his new book, "The Age of Spiritual Machines." I have permission from his publisher, Viking Books, to distribute excerpts from the book, and I would also like to invite you to debate the author at an upcoming series of chats.
The recipient of nine honorary doctorate degrees, honored by two U.S. Presidents, the "restless genius" (Wall Street Journal) Ray Kurzweil has spent a lifetime teaching computers how to act like human beings. He developed software and devices that helped machines to see (the first CCD scanner), read (the first omni-font OCR software), listen (the first commercially marketed large vocabulary speech recognition), talk (the first print-to-speech reading machine), and make music (the Kurzweil digital piano). In "The Age of Spiritual Machines," Kurzweil says that computers can *think,* too, and will soon exceed human intelligence.
The excerpts I have permission to distribute come from two sections of the book. The first introduces the "Law of Accellerating Returns," projecting computing speeds in excess of Moore's Law. The second is about "Building Better Brains." To get the excerpts, send maito:jhart@tenagra.com with the subject line "Send Kurzweil" and I will reply with a text file. You can also find excerpts at the book's companion web site <http://www.penguinputnam.com/kurzweil>.
If you're interested in discussing the practical and ethical implications of these ideas with author Ray Kurzweil, you are invited to a series of chats on the subject of "Are Human Beings Obsolete?":
=> Tuesday, February 9, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time
Book Central on America Online <Keyword: BC>
=> Wednesday, February 10, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time
Stein Online <http://www.compuserve.com/cir/>
=> Thursday, February 11, at 9 p.m. Eastern Time
ZineZone <http://www.zinezone.com/events/>
=> Thursday, February 18, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time
MSNBC <http://www.msnbc.com/chat/>
Enjoy,
Jeremy Hart
jhart@tenagra.com