Ray Kurzweil: The Age of the Spiritual Machine

After reading, Age of the Spiritual Machine, watch the movies I Robot, and The Matrix. After reading his book, I wondered, what will people do when computers learn to think for themselves? How will humans compete?

Kurzweill's thesis, which he explains in this video, is that technological development is accelerating exponentially, so fast in fact, that by 2030 a $1,000 of computer equipment will equal the human brain; by 2060, $1,000 of computing equipment will have the computing power of all the human brains on earth.

A relative of mine who works for a major software company countered, "computers have no life force." From my perspective, what difference does it make?

Tomorrow, I'll work again with a group of developmentally delayed students who are working on "life skills". We will be at a job site where students do jobs including washing dishes, bussing tables, dumping trash, folding napkins, etc. At lunch today, two student savants were role playing from the movie Toy Story II, doing voices; if I closed my eyes, I might have thought I was listening to a soundtrack of the movie. I found myself wondering, what happened? Which areas of the brain were affected? What events or agents had caused their developmental hiccups? How were they able to record what they had heard verbatim? Could neural implants one day compensate for developmental delays?