the singularity is near: when humans transcend biology (english edition)  <b><b><b>“startling in scope and bravado.” —janet maslin, <i>the new york times</i><br /><br />“artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.” —<i>los angeles times</i><br /><br /><b><b><b>“elaborate, smart and persuasive.” —<i>the boston globe</i></b></b></b><br /><br />“a pleasure to read.” —<i>the wall street journal</i><br /><br /></b>one of <i>cbs news</i>’s best fall books of 2005 <b><b>• </b></b>among <i>st louis post-dispatch</i>’s best nonfiction books of 2005 <b><b>• </b></b>one of amazon.com’s best science books of 2005<br /><br />a radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development from t</b>he bestselling author of <i>how to create a mind </i>and <i>the singularity is nearer </i>who bill gates calls “the best person i know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence”</b><br /><br />for over three decades, ray kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. in his classic <i>the age of spiritual machines</i>, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.