Ray Kurzweil's Keynote @ Killer App Expo

IMO, the biggest disagreement among the nano-giants is that between Kurzweil and Kaku.  Michio Kaku believes Moore's Law will collapse in 20 years.  He talks about that (briefly) here.   Kurzweil, of course, believes it will continue on indefinitely.

Um… nevermind.  I see Kurzweil mentions in this talk that he believes Moore's law will, in fact, collapse at that time, but that exponential growth will continue anyway.

Hmmmmm….

Exciting, eh?
~M

This is a great video.  reminds me of one of my favorite quotes about technology from Thoreau,

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.  They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

My question is, if all technology is an extension of ourselves, what part of ourselves do we want to extend?  You might say that it simply extends who we already are, and we are who we are.  But then that means that there is no free will, no choice.   What bothers me about Kurzweil is that he seems to assume that all this technological growth is good and can only be good.  Maybe it is, but I think that there is a dark side to it that Kurzweil doesn't seem to acknowledge or even be aware of.  But then, I'm just going on this video and what little I know about Kurzweil.  Perhaps he addresses it in his books.

Following six months involvement in the writing of the VERY first ever,  report on Artificial Intelligence (AI),  you can possibly imagine that for a left-handed, dyslexic air traffic controller, for whom 3D visual spatial awarenes had then become the ruling principle of daily living - it came as a surprise that the final publication contained JUST WORDS - not a sketch, not a schematic, not an image of either a 2D or 3D perspective or their appropriate references in memory–viz an odor, a touch, a mood, a color, a shadow et al - JUST WORDS - & too many of them.

In the context of INFORMATION BEING the LIGHTof KNOWLEDGE - I would suggest that my response to Martha's comments puts the information content of IP into an appropriately juxtaposed position/perspective to Moore's Law - thus confirming ONE major thread of my 100 zBlog JigSaw - that proposes that we left the Moore's Law gradiant back in 2003 & are already in 2007, two thirds of the way around the curve which will take us totally exponential.  Michio Kaku sits on the fence between Ray Kurzweil and myself in this regard - not surprisingly so in view of the fact that I have already stated that - THE KILLER app … IS LOVE -  and  SO shall  IT BE exponentially !