by Ray Kurzweil

isbn: 0670882178
subject: Nonfiction, Computing
finished: 1/4/2000

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it's interesting and entertaining -- Kurzweil has thought a lot about what it will mean for computers to become intelligent, and he clearly knows a lot about the technical and philosophical issues. On the other hand, I think he puts too much of himself into this book -- he brags, and it's annoying. He also skips from topic to topic a little too quickly; he has deep things to say about some of them, and little that's useful about others (quantum computing, for example). The most interesting chapters are the final ones in which he predicts what the world will look like in 2009, 2019, 2029, and 2099. There's no doubt that the convergence of computer science, neuroscience, and nanotechnology is going to make the next century a very weird one, but it should be possible to write about it in a less excitable way.