About a month ago, I was watching an interview of Raymond Kurzweil on Charlie Rose. I had heard of him before but, to be honest, did not know much about his background. So, I searched my good pal Wikipedia and read about him. Kurzweil wrote an essay back in 2001 titled, “The Law of Accelerating Returns” in which he theorizes about how continuing exponential growth of technology will soon (read: in many of our lifetimes) lead to The Singularity:

It represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth where the rate of growth is so extreme that technology appears to be growing at infinite speed. Of course, from a mathematical perspective, there is no discontinuity, no rupture, and the growth rates remain finite, albeit extraordinarily large. But from our currently limited perspective, this imminent event appears to be an acute and abrupt break in the continuity of progress. However, I emphasize the word “currently,” because one of the salient implications of the Singularity will be a change in the nature of our ability to understand. In other words, we will become vastly smarter as we merge with our technology.

Now I know that some of you are probably like “Wow, sounds like this Kurzweil guy’s been smoking a stash of some sweet chiba. You think I could get some off him?”. But what I really appreciate about the essay is his scientific approach using empirical data from many areas of technology and methodical analysis to support his theories.

I can in no way do this paper justice by summarizing it. I wanted to highlight some of the key points here but my list was getting too long and many of the points just don’t make sense out of context.

Like I said, I first read this paper about a month ago and ever since, I’ve mentioned it to almost everyone I know. Even if you have absolutely no curiosity about the future of technology and how it will change your life, how can you not read an essay which begins by stating:

“You will get $40 trillion just by reading this essay and understanding what it says.”

Over the next few weeks, I hope to read more from Kurzweil and other researchers to gain a broader perspective of this topic.