It was late last night. Very late. Hour of the Wolf Late. I was blearily trudging through a site I stumbled upon via SciTech/Futurism Links. It was called KurzweiIAI.net. It was deep. Real deep. Eventually I had to tear myself away from the fascinating, albeit long winded, discussion of the author... to find my pillow and allow slumbers to overtake me.

I return now to the research and postulations of M. Kurzweil.

Whew. Another heavy dose. I eventually drew it to a close within the extensive comments that follow the thesis.

Let me recap in that Zenny way what this futurist is ’getting at’. He starts off by makiing some pointed observations concerning the nature of exponential growth. Primarily, Technological Growth is examined. Things like Moore’s Law (the doubling of transistors in the CPU every 18 months - originally 24 months), the rate of software complexity scaled over time, the speed of communication, etc. All fine examples of exponential growth, Yup. Plenty of charts to show that rocket like growth rate to infinity and... wait for it... beyond!

Then he shows that such mechanisms are also inherent in today’s economic growth. Particularly since the ’90’s. (The Nasdaq Go Go Years, remember them? Sooo Last Century!)

He postulates that the Fed’s OCD fixation on inflation is actually harmful to the economy and ultimately doomed to inconsequence as a result of Global Market Expansions and other Big Movers like Productivity being also exponential of late.

He shows that we are conditioned to see the world linearly and these super-growth patterns don’t register on a day-to-day basis.

The simple recollection that email is ’only’ 35 years old (!) today as well as the hyper-growth of the Big WWW (ie the World Wide Web, The Web, The Net) are prime examples of not seeing the huge advances that we take for granted. I’m an old-timer on the net. I was there with the old 24k (!) modem trying to figure out what the heck a ’web’ was. I remember it like it was yesterday, although it was nearly 15 years ago. Then there was that whole AOL phase (on the whiz-bang 56K modem "EEEeeeAhhhhh"). Not long after came high-speed cable modem. That’s where I am today. I’m waiting for the next step, yup, yup. I started out on the Atari (no net). Then the Pentium II (yup. and no net). Now it’s an AMD 2.2 Ghz with 1 Gb of RAM, 200 Gb Hard Drive. Also a finicky NVidia 6900 Ultra (0.13 microns process technology with 220 Million Transistors) Maximus Zen! And even those
specs are a bit dated (at around 1 year) - since then we have dual core and even quad core CPU’s for instance. The Web seems kinda pokey to me at times even with Broadband. I’m waiting for the next new thing in modems. And it WILL come, my friends, sooner than later. Early adopters like myself will want it, bad. We will drool for it. We will pay exorbitantly for it, too. Eventually the slow pokers will eventually catch up to our dust and experience the New World that Tech has given us. That’s how it works. And the Games just get better! Whoohoo!

From here our brave futurist steps off the realm of the real and into La La Land. He starts to seriously expound that this exponential growth will result in such Amazing Stuff such as:

1. Downloaded Brains. Yup. You read it right. Download ’You’ into the ’Machine’. It will ’be’ you for all intents and purposes too! All of your memories. (obtained via nanobots reading every atomic particle in your system and producing relevant code that ’is’ that which is ’you’. Heavy stuff, eh?

2. Virtual worlds will replace the Web. We will Live more and more ’In’ the Machine. Living in fantastic worlds. Many of those worlds will be pure flights of fancy, others absolute recreations of reality. ’You’ will flit in and out of normal reality via nano-swarms that provide your consciousness with a body. (with all the super duper capabilities of a HyperNetworked NanoBody mind you!)

3. This Exponential Expansion eventually leads to what he characterizes as a ’Singularity’. A point beyond which we CANNOT comprehend. Machine AI so advanced and fast that they transcend our comprehension. This is Grade A WOW reading, my friend.

Quite possibly in our lifetime, Mr. K tells us!

There’s more. And some stuff about why we are alone in the Universe, Intelligence wise we are at the head of the pack. Otherwise other cultures on other worlds that went through ’The Singularity’ of exponential growth would be all over us, all around us, everywhere. Cause that’s where we are headed asap!

And then there’s lots of discussion/comments that follow. If nothing else it is quite a ride on the Future Train! Choo Choo!

Highly Recommended (Over several absorptions. It is a Long Read.)

Me? Can’t wait for it. Bring it on. Before I grow old and die, damn it.

Zenny, Futurist in Excess

ps Can’t wait to read what Sphynx01 and Banfiadh may deign to comment on this! Oh! and Stewey too! Come on guys... give ’em hell!

link to the math behind exponential growth


sexy exponential iTunes graph! ooOoo!


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