Ray Kurzweil’s Foreword to The Intelligent Universe

WOW! Ray has some high hopes for humanity or whatever it is that we are to become. In his Foreword to The Intelligent Universe he gives several numbers about what kind of calculations per second we can expect from computers in the near future. The calculation power will exceed the number of calculations that a human brain is capable of. What I wonder is, “Who will write the software that will make it more intelligent than the human brain?” Regardless of how fast our computers are, if we can’t write software to utilize the power we will not gain from it. The Problem with Programming is a good read on this aspect. One other thing I would like to mention is the evolutionary nature of the universe. Ray points out an interesting hypothesis put forward by Leonard Susskind and Lee Smolin: “universes give rise to other universes.” I believe this is compatible with Ken Wilber’s thinking:

"Evolution has a direction, yes, a principle of order out of chaos, as it is commonly phrased. In other words, a drive toward greater depth. Chance is defeated, meaning emerges -- the intrinsic value of the Kosmos increases with each unfolding. Evolution has a broad and general tendency to move in the direction of: increasing complexity, increasing differentiation/integration, increasing organization/structuration, increasing relative autonomy, increasing telos."

So, if we can keep from destroying ourselves there are some exciting times ahead. But I think in order for the kind of development to take place within the timeframe that Ray is talking about we are going to need better programming methodologies to make it happen.

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