FC: How humans will merge with machines -- report on Ray Kurzweil talk

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39967,00.html

   Kurzweil: Rooting for the Machine
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
   1:35 p.m. Nov. 3, 2000 PST

   BETHESDA, Maryland -- Raymond Kurzweil doesn't merely predict that
   machine intelligence will surpass human brains by the end of the
   century. He's eagerly anticipating it.

   In a Kurzweillian future, the world would become a very strange place,
   where converging advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and
   computer science combine to propel humanity to its next stage of
   evolution.

   "By the end of this century, I don't think there will be a clear
   distinction between human and machine," Kurzweil told the Foresight
   Institute's Eighth Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology on Friday.

   "We can expand the capacity of our brains by a factor of thousands or
   millions, and, by the end of the century, by trillions," predicts the
   inventor-turned-author of the Age of Intelligent Machines and the Age
   of Spiritual Machines.

   Technology, of course, has been part of human existence since our
   Cro-Magnon ancestors picked up a stone and realized it could be more
   than part of the landscape.

   But Kurzweil is talking about something a bit more ambitious. If he's
   right, exponential progress in science and engineering will allow us
   to merge with machines. We will become resistant to diseases, think
   faster, live better, and become transhuman in ways that would make
   even Superman green with envy.

   If he's wrong, well, then we'll continue to have buggy software,
   faulty memories, and lifespans that fall far short of the lowly
   leopard tortoise.

   [...]




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