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the Singularity is Near Book Review

It is probably not farfetched to say that The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is the Singularitarian Bible. It is the one book that anyone interested (together with everyone not interested) in the Technological Singularity must read. No subject, field or issue is too big to fit within this book's subject matter. It examines the cutting edge research in and the implications thereof physics, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, computer science, biotechnology and genetics, artificial intelligence and robotics, nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, nuclear physics and quantum theory, evolutionary theory and sociology, astronomy and cosmology, economics, politics and philosophy.

This book is meticulously researched and contains over 100 pages of scientific notes and references. It also contains a whole chapter of criticisms which are addressed in detail by Ray Kurzweil. If it does have a weakness it has to be the fact that it is so conceptually and theoretically advanced, so breathtakingly far-sighted and so exhaustively precise in its most minute cutting-edge scientific detail that readers may find it at times hard to follow. (Socrates' note: "I know I did") At the same time the book is undoubtedly successful at communicating "the singularity is near" message to a broad non-scientific readership.

Socrates' verdict: 10 out of 10