Rough Draft: Age of Spiritual Machines Argument Essay
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- Date Submitted: 11/17/2015 01:01 AM
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Nicholas Shirk
English 104
Cooper
October 27, 2015
In Ray Kurzweil’s book, “The Age of Spiritual Machines”, Kurzweil works to explain his
theory on why and how technology will continue to evolve, eventually leading to an age where
humans have created self aware AI more advanced than humans today. Using his theories,
Kurzweil makes predictions about when and how technology will advance. He makes
predictions in areas concerning technology's uses in education, communications, disabilities,
the arts, Warfare, as well as technology's place in politics and philosophy. However, as I look
back at Kurzweil’s predictions for the year 2009 as well as the soon to be year 2019, a general
inaccuracy with his predictions.
Now, Kurzweil did get a lot right when it came to his 2009 predictions, but I do believe
that he failed to factor in two elements into his predictions that have greatly affected the
changes in technology. The first element is changes in the economy, and the second being
changes in popular culture. I think that these two factors are for the most part responsible for
Kurzweil's inaccuracy in his predictions, but are not enough to make his predictions entirely
irrelevant in the future. If you were to revise Kurzweil's predictions keeping in mind today's
culture and economy, it's possible for them to be far more accurate than originally.
However, before I go any further, I do want to point out how incredible Kurzweil is for
having so many of his predictions come true, both in his first set of predictions in the 1980’s as
well as his 2009 predictions, and the inaccuracies I talk about are due to factors that Kurtzweil
had no way of knowing himself. Kurtzweil was a bit optimistic about the economy but cultural
change is something I don't think anyone can predict. And then there's the very nature of
predictions being less and less accurate the further out in time you go. So I don’t want anyone ...
English 104
Cooper
October 27, 2015
In Ray Kurzweil’s book, “The Age of Spiritual Machines”, Kurzweil works to explain his
theory on why and how technology will continue to evolve, eventually leading to an age where
humans have created self aware AI more advanced than humans today. Using his theories,
Kurzweil makes predictions about when and how technology will advance. He makes
predictions in areas concerning technology's uses in education, communications, disabilities,
the arts, Warfare, as well as technology's place in politics and philosophy. However, as I look
back at Kurzweil’s predictions for the year 2009 as well as the soon to be year 2019, a general
inaccuracy with his predictions.
Now, Kurzweil did get a lot right when it came to his 2009 predictions, but I do believe
that he failed to factor in two elements into his predictions that have greatly affected the
changes in technology. The first element is changes in the economy, and the second being
changes in popular culture. I think that these two factors are for the most part responsible for
Kurzweil's inaccuracy in his predictions, but are not enough to make his predictions entirely
irrelevant in the future. If you were to revise Kurzweil's predictions keeping in mind today's
culture and economy, it's possible for them to be far more accurate than originally.
However, before I go any further, I do want to point out how incredible Kurzweil is for
having so many of his predictions come true, both in his first set of predictions in the 1980’s as
well as his 2009 predictions, and the inaccuracies I talk about are due to factors that Kurtzweil
had no way of knowing himself. Kurtzweil was a bit optimistic about the economy but cultural
change is something I don't think anyone can predict. And then there's the very nature of
predictions being less and less accurate the further out in time you go. So I don’t want anyone ...