from the trend-analysis dept.
A short profile in Wired Magazine ("Kurzweil's Law," by P. Boutin) covers Ray Kurzweilís analysis of long-term technological trends. According to the article, "He'll lay out his conclusions next year in a much-anticipated book called The Singularity Is Near, in which (surprise) he'll argue that technology's increasingly rapid pace of change is fundamentally transformative, unstoppable, economically powerful, and cool. It's not just our optical networks that are getting better; according to Kurzweil, the capacity of human consciousness itself is expanding exponentially."
Kurzweilís analyses of these trends "aggregate progress into one big, constantly accelerating curve that flies off the charts at the point where its rate of change becomes infinite – mathematically speaking, a singularity. . . . In lay terms, the future beyond the singularity is completely unpredictable from today's vantage point."
You can find out more on Kurzweilís new web site, www.kurzweilai.net, which was recently covered here.
