Ray Kurzweil has released a new book titled “The Singularity is Near”. This book looks at the exponentially increasing nature of the evolution of human technology creations. Kurzweil explains this phenomenon through his idea of The Law of Accelerating Returns.

(from New Scientist subscription required):

“So what does the law of accelerating returns tell us about the future? In terms of the aforementioned paradigm-shift rate, between 2000 and 2014 we’ll make 20 years of progress at 2000 rates, equivalent to the entire 20th century. And then we’ll do the same again in only seven years. To express this another way, we won’t experience 100 years of technological advance in the 21st century; we will witness in the order of 20,000 years of progress when measured by the rate of progress in 2000, or about 1000 times that achieved in the 20th century.

Above all, information technologies will grow at an explosive rate. And information technology is the technology that we need to consider. Ultimately everything of value will become an information technology: our biology, our thoughts and thinking processes, manufacturing and many other fields. As one example, nanotechnology-based manufacturing will enable us to apply computerised techniques to automatically assemble complex products at the molecular level. This will mean that by the mid-2020s we will be able to meet our energy needs using very inexpensive nanotechnology-based solar panels that will capture the energy in 0.03 per cent of the sunlight that falls on the Earth, which is all we need to meet our projected energy needs in 2030.”

New Scientist (subscription required) has also published an article authored by Kurzweil in their current issue. Here is another quote from that article that sums up Kurzweil’s projections:

“Ultimately, we will merge with our technology. This will begin with nanobots in our bodies and brains. The nanobots will keep us healthy, provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the internet and greatly expand human intelligence. But keep in mind that non-biological intelligence is doubling in capability each year, whereas our biological intelligence is essentially fixed. As we get to the 2030s, the non-biological portion of our intelligence will predominate. By the mid 2040s, the non-biological portion of our intelligence will be billions of times more capable than the biological portion. Non-biological intelligence will have access to its own design and will be able to improve itself in an increasingly rapid redesign cycle.”

This is fairly amazing from a Smartmobs point of view. Imagine a socialscape of smartmob mobile social ad hoc networks where the wireless devices are embedded in and connected directly to the human brain-mind itself. Altough, another angle to look at is from the McLuhan and Postman media ecology angles. For instance, what will this technology, when over extended, reverse into?

Update: Here’s a review of this book by J. D. Lasica.

Ray Kurzweil has released a new book titled “The Singularity is Near”. This book looks at the exponentially increasing nature of the evolution of human technology creations. Kurzweil explains this phenomenon through his idea of The Law of Accelerating Returns.
(from New Scientist subscription required):

“So what does the law of accelerating returns tell us about [...]