The Singularity Is Near

April 25, 1988
With this revised version of a 1975 novella, acclaimed novelist Banks (Continental Drift) lampoons the American family in a wonderfully funny range of literary styles. Family Life opens in the macho mode of the tall tale cum horse opera, replete with a patrilineal catalogue of brawling heroes who indulge in their boys-will-be-boys exploits. With marriage, a man gains the rank of royalty. King Egress the Hearty, embarrassed now about past escapades with his hippie buddy Loon, lives in an American hometown with his "right-on queen.'' But she cavorts with the wine steward. The princes Orgone, Dread and Egress Jr. get into teenage scrapes, hunting girls and cougar, taking hash and coke, drinking and dying. When the Queen, aka Naomi Ruth, writes her own novel, rendered here in a chapter titled ``Remember Me to Camelot,'' she rephrases events in a tone of sentimental confessional relish. She tells about her cheerleader's crush on football captain Rex, their marriage, mobile home and three boys. But once Rex goes off to Vietnam, Naomi quickly gets liberated. How Rex and Naomi fare afterward emerges as a series of blase encounters in increasingly glitzy places. Exuberant and irreverent, Family Life bares a knife-edge of social satire.

November 15, 2004
Former LJ columnist Kurzweil (also winner of a National Medal of Technology) on what he calls the singularity: the point when we merge with machines, moving from reality to virtual reality and solving issues like aging, pollution, and world hunger. Whew! With a five-city author tour.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2005
Continuing the themes of " The Age of Spiritual Machines " (1999), Kurzweil further expounds his conviction that the human being will be succeeded by a superintelligent entity that is partly biological, partly computerized. Welcoming this prospect, and regarding it as inevitable, Kurzweil plunges into contemporary technological arenas, particularly genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Citing examples from medical devices to military weapons in which human control is increasingly detached from the autonomy of machines, Kurzweil stresses that trends are accelerating in terms of miniaturization and computational power. Eventually, smallness and speed reach a point of development, a "singularity," with implications Kurzweil says even he cannot imagine. Disinclined to categorize his views as dystopian or utopian, the author recognizes that his vision is profoundly threatening to concepts of human nature and individuality. A closing section on philosophy and ethics accordingly addresses objections to his optimistic predictions. An involved presentation, this is best for readers of the wide-angle, journalistic treatment " Radical Evolution" (2005), by Joel Garreau. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 25, 2005
Renowned inventor Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines
) may be technology's most credibly hyperbolic optimist. Elsewhere he has argued that eliminating fat intake can prevent cancer; here, his quarry is the future of consciousness and intelligence. Humankind, it runs, is at the threshold of an epoch ("the singularity," a reference to the theoretical limitlessness of exponential expansion) that will see the merging of our biology with the staggering achievements of "GNR" (genetics, nanotechnology and robotics) to create a species of unrecognizably high intelligence, durability, comprehension, memory and so on. The word "unrecognizable" is not chosen lightly: wherever this is heading, it won't look like us. Kurzweil's argument is necessarily twofold: it's not enough to argue that there are virtually no constraints on our capacity; he must also convince readers that such developments are desirable. In essence, he conflates the wholesale transformation of the species with "immortality," for which read a repeal of human limit. In less capable hands, this phantasmagoria of speculative extrapolation, which incorporates a bewildering variety of charts, quotations, playful Socratic dialogues and sidebars, would be easier to dismiss. But Kurzweil is a true scientist—a large-minded one at that—and gives due space both to "the panoply of existential risks" as he sees them and the many presumed lines of attack others might bring to bear. What's arresting isn't the degree to which Kurzweil's heady and bracing vision fails to convince—given the scope of his projections, that's inevitable—but the degree to which it seems downright plausible.

Starred review from April 1, 2015

Kurzweil's most recent book on the Singularity deserves inclusion in all AI collections. While he may seem to you by this point reminiscent of Grover from the Sesame Street tale The Monster at the End of This Book, there is no doubt his work informs the AI debate.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.