IGX

Was going to rent it but it came out on Netflix On Demand. Documentary about Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist (with excellent track record) who is promoting the coming "singularity," when exponential growth in the fields of genetics, nanotech, and robotics/AI result in the acceleration of technology so fast that the only way humans will be able to keep up will be by enhancing themselves with that technology. Kurzweil believes this is coming much sooner than most people understand <25 years, and we have to prepare for it.

The basic premise is that, looking at the data, all of these fields increase exponentially. The smart phone in your pocket is something like 1 million times more powerful than a supercomputer in 1965, a million times smaller, and a million times less expensive. This trend is not slowing; it still continues to increase exponentially, suggesting we'll have cheap machines the size of red blood cells relatively soon.

This was extremely entertaining, and not because Kurzweil is entirely sympathetic or believable; he comes across as a little nuts at times. There are people in the fields he's making predictions about who aren't as optimistic as he is. E.g., some people thing this is going to take a lot longer than he says. Others such as the AI people point out that, yes, you will have artificial minds that are 10x, 100x, 1000x, etc. smarter than the smartest human, and that will 100% happen, and sooner than most people understand. What happens to people when you have new conscious entity literally 1,000,000 times more intelligent (exponential growth)? The smarter people being interviewed (Dean Kamen) get less into crazy predictions and more into "It's impossible to predict what is going to happen."

There are some clumsy discussions of religion that will offend some people, but really they didn't get anybody similarly qualified to discuss that.

Overall this was a lot of fun to watch.

Well, that's a relief. I misread the title and thought that you were going to review this:

Loved it. Mind blown. Thanks for the recommendation.

Well, this should be interesting. We'll get to find out if this is true:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

it's a $0.99 rental on itunes this week. loaded it up for the long flight. thanks.