halfknot

Caught that Ray Kurzweil has a new book coming out called The Singularity is Near. Relates to what I was blabbering about before with Mars and robots.

"What if not everyone wants to go along with this?" a straw man asks Mr. Kurzweil. For purposes of simulated debate, the book drums up an assortment of colorful naysayers. This voice is that of Ned Ludd, the opponent of technological advances who gave Luddites their name, but Charles Darwin and Timothy Leary also chime in. Mr. Kurzweil also gives a speaking part to George 2048, a mid-21st-century machine with a reassuring personality. His boldest move is to let bacteria from two billion years ago argue among themselves about the wisdom of banding together to form multicellular life-forms.