The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

One approach to emulating the brain’s software is through reverse engineering—scanning a human brain (which will be achievable early in the next century)4 and essentially copying its neural circuitry in a neural computer (a computer designed to simulate a massive number of human neurons) of sufficient capacity

The twenty-first century will be different. The human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems of need, if not desire, and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future.

Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well, like the gambler in The Twilight Zone episode.

Be Careful What You Wish For.”1 As this engaging series was wont to do, it illustrated one of the paradoxes of human nature: We like to solve problems, but we don’t want them all solved, not too quickly, anyway We are more attached to the problems than to the solutions.

The Age of Spiritual Machines “ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers, quantum computers, Godel’s theorem, neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test, brain scanning, the slowness of neurons, chess playing programs, the Internet—the whole world of information technology past, present, and future. This is a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.”