User talk:Kirbywill

The Age of Spiritual Machines forces us to imagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs. This is also where the difference between humanity and technology fades. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, Kurzweil's twenty-first century promises to be an age in which human sensitivity and artificial intelligence merge. Kurtweil writes:

"Machines, derived from human thinking and surpassing humans in their capacity for experience, will claim to be conscious, and thus be spiritual. They will believe that they are conscious. They will believe that they have spiritual experiences. They will be convinced that these experiences are meaningful. And given the historical inclination of the human race to anthropomorphize the phenomena we encounter, and the persuasiveness of the machines, we’re likely to believe them when they tell us this" (Kurtweil, 153).

The Age of Spiritual Machines is a list of prediction, as well as proprecy of the future. Kurzweil guides us through the advances that will result in computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain. Kurtweil believes that machines will achieve all this by 2099, with human attributes not far behind. We will begin to have relationships with computers which will possess personalities and use them as teachers, companions, and lovers. Janet Murray predicts the future in her novel, Hamlet in the Holodeck, that digital story-telling and reality will merge in the future. With so many professionals predicting this, one can only agree with the possibilty of this happening. The Age of Spiritual Machines believes that the information will be fed straight into our brains. Computers will read all the world's literature. The distinction between us and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.

Works Cited

Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines New York: Viking, 1999