Finished “The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence” by Ray Kurzweil a couple weeks ago. If you want a scary view of what the future holds, read this book. I’m not a great book reviewer, so just like all of my other book reviews, here are a couple quotes I thought were thought provoking and/or notable.

“… 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.” [pg 1]

On death: “… A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and indeed often consider its intrusion a tragic event. Yet we would find it hard to live without it. Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.” [pg 2]

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” [pg 14]

“What makes a soul? And if machines ever have souls, what will be the equivalent of psychoactive drugs? Of pain? Of the physical/emotional high I get from having a clean office?” (Esther Dyson on pg 135)