New Book: The Singularity is Near

Just picked up a new book today by Ray Kurzweil titled, "The Singularity is Near". The jacket doesn't tell much about what the book is about, but the TOC has entries such as the nature of order, the life cycle of a paradigm, fractal designs, reversible computing, subneural models, etc. At the outset, it looks like Kurzweil has put together a compendium of thoughts and ideas on the emergence, or in his words, singularity of human development in the near future. Nanotechnology and models of the brain along with quatum computing essays abound in his book. It should be a good read and am looking forward to it.

Greetings and Salutations!

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Welcome to my personal blog on emergence theory. I have named this blog "emergence-x" to tend the reader to ponder not only emergence, but what it means to our future. The "x" is analogous to the unknown. Emergence is a very interesting topic. It can mean many things. In the context of this particular blog, however, I wish to ponder emergence in a global sense. The subject? Human beings and our world. This may seem to be extremely ridiculous to most casual readers, since it would be akin to posting a blog about the meaning of life. Am I right? I mean, come one. Try and tackle something a little more attainable, say, the migration patterns of African swallows?!

But no! Why waste valuable 1's and 0's on simple and easily achievable goals? That just sounds boring. Why live life if you don't want to find the meaning of it? In this blog, I wish to consider the human race as a focal point for an entire global emergence theory. Hell, if we can do it for ant colonies, we can do it for human societies as well. I pick humans, why? Because they are something I can relate to ;)

Sooooo....in the interest of brevity (too late), the first thought on my mind is the culmination of several recent technological paradigms and their convergence. Particularly: quantum computing, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, bioengineering, and geoengineering. Recent advances in these areas have seen things such as DNA used to build nanotechnology and connecting nanowires to neurons. What does it all mean when these fields converge, overlap, grow, and advances start to become part of our lives. To any well read sci-fi enthusiast (guilty), there are literally millions of possible permutations of how these fields of study could effect our lives in the future. Like what you ask? I don't know, maybe stuff like being able to build artificial humans with brains as powerful as super computers. You know, classic stuff like that. But the kicker is, it REALLY is happening. RIGHT....NOW. If you read the science journals (guilty again) and extrapolate only fifty or so years. This stuff is real! Seriously!