http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39967,00.html Kurzweil: Rooting for the Machine by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 1:35 p.m. Nov. 3, 2000 PST BETHESDA, Maryland -- Raymond Kurzweil doesn't merely predict that machine intelligence will surpass human brains by the end of the century. He's eagerly anticipating it. In a Kurzweillian future, the world would become a very strange place, where converging advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer science combine to propel humanity to its next stage of evolution. "By the end of this century, I don't think there will be a clear distinction between human and machine," Kurzweil told the Foresight Institute's Eighth Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology on Friday. "We can expand the capacity of our brains by a factor of thousands or millions, and, by the end of the century, by trillions," predicts the inventor-turned-author of the Age of Intelligent Machines and the Age of Spiritual Machines. Technology, of course, has been part of human existence since our Cro-Magnon ancestors picked up a stone and realized it could be more than part of the landscape. But Kurzweil is talking about something a bit more ambitious. If he's right, exponential progress in science and engineering will allow us to merge with machines. We will become resistant to diseases, think faster, live better, and become transhuman in ways that would make even Superman green with envy. If he's wrong, well, then we'll continue to have buggy software, faulty memories, and lifespans that fall far short of the lowly leopard tortoise. [...]