manifest since the beginningoftime. This is a strange role that Kurzweil casts for himself. He and his colleagues are at the same time merely raw material for an almighty evolution, no different from amoebae cleverly designed to overcome the limits of chemistry, and, at the same time, god-like fidflllers of destiny and creators of the fiiture. One does not need to be David Noble [3] to see strong religious themes sweeping through the book. "We will be software, not hardware" (p. 129) could have been uttered by an ecstatic prophet announcing: The final judgment cometh and thou shalt be spirit, not flesh. Interestingly enough, though, in this contemporary eschatological vision, there is no day of reckoning. In best engineering tradition, each problem will be solved, separately, one by one, though in a very quick pace. For Kurzweil, paradise is only thirty years away when "the basic necessities of food, shelter and security are available for the vast majority of the human population" (p.222), and, "a variety of neural implant technology has essentially eliminated the handicaps associated with most disabilities" (p.221). In light of this bright fimtre, any critique can only be irrational, misguided Luddism whose impact, however, "is
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Philosophy and computing: An introduction
Viseu, Ana
Follow ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
, Volume 31 (1)
Association for Computing Machinery – Mar 1, 2001
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