"The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" by Ray Kurzweil

In this provocative book Ray Kurzweil, who Forbes Magazine calls "the ultimate thinking machine," takes readers on an breathtaking tour of the history of computation and artificial intelligence and makes startling predictions for the future of technology such as:

• 2010: A translating telephone will allow you to speak in any language and be heard in the listener's native tongue, in real time, in your own voice.
• 2020: a $1000 computer will match the processing speed of the human brain - about 20 billion calculations per second.
• 2030: Most humans will have neural implants to improve their vision, hearing, memory, and thinking skills.



How much do we humans enjoy our current status as the most intelligent beings on earth? Enough to try to stop our own inventions from surpassing us in smarts? If so, we'd better pull the plug right now, because if Ray Kurzweil is right we've only got until about 2020 before computers outpace the human brain in computational power.