raymond kurzweil the singularity is near

He could look at how quickly computers were improving and make an educated guess about when the singularity would arrive. Vinge linked the singularity directly with improvements in computer hardware.

Many years later, this idea was picked up by another mathematician, the professor and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who added an additional twist.

One day in the 1950s, while talking with his colleague Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann began discussing the ever-accelerating pace of technological change, which, he said, 'gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue.' The word was first used to describe a crucial moment in the evolution of humanity by the great mathematician John von Neumann. Kurzweil's notion of a singularity is taken from cosmology, in which it signifies a border in spacetime beyond which normal rules of measurement do not apply (the edge of a black hole, for example). Kurzweil is 60, but he intends to be no more than 40 when the singularity arrives.

He is attempting to travel across a frontier in time, to pass through the border between our era and a future so different as to be unrecognizable. With his perfect posture and narrow black glasses, he would look at home in an old documentary about Cape Canaveral, but his mission is bolder than any mere voyage into space. * Photo: Rennio Maifredi * Ray Kurzweil, the famous inventor, is trim, balding, and not very tall.

Raymond kurzweil the singularity is near