However, the material that bothered me most was in Chapter 3: on achieving the computational capacity of the brain in a machine. Little dialogues between Molly in 2004 (the year he wrote the book), her 2104 self, and other characters were patronizing, charmless, and a very poor homage to those in Douglas Hofstadter’s much better book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. However, the supposed end-point of Kurzweil’s argument (transhumanism through downloading people into machines) already did not seem credible to me (or, for that matter, terribly interesting). Funnily enough, I saw MIT’s Rod Brooks give a talk about robotics riding on the coat-tails of electronics at around the same time I finished this section, which helped make me willing to read on. This didn’t bother me too much, though I did have some grumbles. The beginning of the book was about the exponential growth of technology, and particularly computing power.

But here’s why I personally wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Also, I can’t claim to be authoritative, because the book may have got better after I gave up. I don’t see the point in spending too long reviewing what, for me, was not a useful read. I found the book unbearable for more-or-less the same reason.

He found it fun to read the way he finds science fiction fun to read.

Joe said he liked it because it allowed him to stretch his imagination. I was actually pre-disposed to like it: not only had Kurzweil referenced one of my articles in an earlier book (which I actually never read, but was flattered by), but this tome came highly recommended by a friend of mine. Normally I would have written off a book that I disliked much earlier, but I persevered. I tried 231/487 pages of text and 66/100 pages of notes worth. I should start by saying that I tried with this book.

The singularity is near