Perhaps it is Ray Kurzweil's Law Of Accelerating Returns that is the underlying cause for the changes Alvin Toffler describes in several of his books:
- 1970: Future Shock about how the speed of life will keep accelerating and cause some people to experience a new type of culture shock called future shock.
- 1980: The Third Wave which I briefly describe in my previous post.
- 2006: Revolutionary Wealth where Toffler examines the many ways the "Third Wave" is revolutionizing our relationships to three "deep fundamentals" and, therefore, to wealth systems in general. The deep fundamentals are time, space, and knowledge.
In Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Ray says,
"...the future will be far more surprising than most people realize, because few observers have truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change itself is accelerating."
Ray's book shows many charts describing and predicting the accelerating capabilities of many technologies. It also describes how this trend has gone on for a long time and that human events, such as wars or depressions, have not altered the accelerating capabilities of technology. Based on the smooth and accelerating rate of technological change, Kurzweil predicts, with specific time frames, major milestones of technological capability in relation to the human brain.
Ray estimates the calculations per second of the human brain to be around 10 to the 16th power. He then refers to his plot of computer calculations per second per $1,000 by year. With the accelerating nature of the plot, $1,000 computers will reach the calculating power of one human brain sometime around the year 2020. Supercomputers will reach the calculating power of one human brain near the year 2013. I'm fairly sure having the calculating power of one human brain does not translate into being as smart as one human brain. Humans still need to develop computer artificial intelligence to the point where it can make use of the calculating power of the computer. But when we do, we may want to drop the word "artificial" from the description.
Computer memory versus human memory is another way to consider how computer capacity compares to human brain capacity. Kurzweil estimates that human functional memory size is around 10 to the 13th power (10 trillion) bits. He also estimates that we will be able to purchase 10 trillion bits of memory for one thousand dollars around the year 2018. Therefore he predicts that $1,000 computers will have as much memory as one human brain around the same time they have the calculating power of a human brain.
The mind blowing milestone is that $1,000 computers will reach the calculating power of all human brains near the year 2050. This means that even if you put all human brains together (approximately 9.6 billion humans in 2050) to calculate something, that our $1,000 computer in 2050 would be able to do it faster because its calculations per second would be faster than all humans combined. What are the implications of these predictions? The technological singularity is the answer that Kurzweil postulates.
The Technological Singularity is the moment that non-human intelligence, (i.e. computer intelligence or artificial intelligence), becomes more intelligent then human beings. Once this happens it is impossible for humans to predict (understand) what will happen beyond that point. (Brings up visions of The Matrix, doesn't it?) Ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity will happen near the year 2045.
Kurzweil spends the last third of The Singularity Is Near responding to criticisms and possible criticisms of his ideas. To this day he follows up on the accelerating intelligence that he sees happening in the world and continues to track his predictions and write about them.
I will be referring to many of the concepts and ideas of Ray Kurzweil in this blog. He has given us a great yardstick with which to watch and predict the massive and accelerating changes happening to our civilization.
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