 |
Index to Books Referring to the Singularity or Moore's Law
Human by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Your highlight at location 5435
In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the cofounders of Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing
company, made the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum
component cost doubles every twenty-four months. That means that every twenty-four months they
could double the number of transistors on a circuit without increasing the cost. That is exponential
growth. Carver Mead, a professor at Caltech, dubbed this observation Moore’s law, and it has been
viewed both as a prediction and a goal for growth in the technology industry. It continues to be fulfilled.
In the last sixty years, computation speed, measured in what are known as floating point operations per
second (FLOPS), has increased from 1 FLOPS to over 250 trillion FLOPS! As Henry Markram, project
director of IBM’s Blue Brain project (which we will talk about later), states, this is “by far the largest man-
made growth rate of any kind in the ~10,000 years of human civilization.”3 The graph of exponential
change, instead of gradually increasing continually as a linear graph would, gradually increases until a
critical point is reached and then there is an upturn such that the line becomes almost vertical. This
“knee” in the graph is where Kurzweil thinks we currently are in the rate of change that will occur owing
to the knowledge gained in these areas. He thinks we are not aware of it or prepared for it because we
have been in the more slowly progressing earlier stage of the graph and have been lulled into thinking
that the rate of change is linear.
What Have You Changed Your Mind About? by John Brockman
Your highlight at location 4288
I now believe that in the not too distant future the best forecasters will be not people but machines—ever
more capable “prediction engines” probing ever deeper into stochastic spaces. Indicators of this trend
are everywhere, from the rise of quantitative analysis in the financial sector to the emergence of
computer-based horizon scanning systems in use by governments around the world—and of course the
relentless advance of computer systems along the upward-sweeping curve of Moore’s Law. We already
have human-computer hybrids at work in the discovery/forecasting space, from Amazon’s Mechanical
Turk to the myriad online prediction markets. In time, we will recognize that these systems are an
intermediate step toward prediction engines, in much the same way that human “computers,” who once
performed the mathematical calculations on complex projects, were replaced by general-purpose
electronic digital computers. -- Paul Saffo's words.
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Power Law Distribution describes why so few people write for Wike and so few understand that the
Singularity is coming:
Your highlight at location 1608
The general form of a power law distribution appears in social settings when some set of items—users,
pictures, tags—is ranked by frequency of occurrence. You can rank a group of Flickr users by the
number of pictures they submit. You can rank a collection of pictures by the number of viewers. You can
rank tags by the number of pictures they are applied to. All of these graphs will be in the rough shape of
a power law distribution.
FAB by Neil Gershtenfeld
Moore's Law is decreasing not only the cost of software but also the cost of hardware.
A Life Decoded by Craig Venter
Exponential curve made the process of decoding DNA much shorter.
Wired for War by Peter Singer
Exponential robot progress.
Your highlight at location 2012
Hugo de Garis, the head of the StarBrain AI project, has written a cheerily titled article on this entitled
“Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators?” In it he writes, “Within a single human
generation, it will very probably be possible to store a single bit of information on a single atom.” If this
proves true, an object the size of a disc then would be able to hold a trillion trillion (a 1 with twenty-four
zeros after it) bits of information. By comparison, the human brain is created from a genome of roughly
twenty-three million bits of information. If computers can match this almost incomprehensible processing
speed with such amazing memory, the advantage that human brains have of being so parallel starts to
fall by the wayside.
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
The exponential rise of the computer is going to eliminate the need for logical sequential people.
Some people seem more comfortable with logical, sequential, computer-like reasoning. They tend to
become lawyers, accountants, and engineers. Other people are more comfortable with holistic, intuitive,
and nonlinear reasoning. They tend to become inventors, entertainers, and counselors. And these
individual inclinations go on to shape families, institutions, and societies.
Your highlight at location 644
So an array of software and online programs has emerged that allow patients to answer a series of
questions on their computer screens and arrive at a preliminary diagnosis without the assistance of a
physician. Health care consumers have begun to use such tools both to “figure out their risk of serious
diseases—such as heart failure, coronary artery disease and some of the most common cancers—[and]
to make life-and-death treatment decisions once they are diagnosed,” reports the Wall Street Journal.29
At the same time, there’s been an explosion of electronic databases of medical and health information.
In a typical year, about 100 million people worldwide go online for health and medical information and
visit more than 23,000 medical Web sites.30 As patients self-diagnose and tap the same reservoir of
information available to physicians, these tools are transforming the doctor’s role from omniscient
purveyor of solutions to empathic advisor on options. Of course, the day-to-day work of physicians often
involves challenges too complex for software alone—and we’ll still rely on experienced doctors to
diagnose unusual diseases. But, as I’ll show later in this book, these developments are changing the
emphasis of many medical practices—away from routine, analytical, and information-based work and
toward empathy, narrative medicine, and holistic care.
Computers using statistics are going to out-think humans.
Moneyball
Your highlight at location 735
The statistics enabled you to find your way past all sorts of sight-based scouting prejudices: the
scouting dislike of short right-handed pitchers, for instance, or the scouting distrust of skinny little guys
who get on base. Or the scouting distaste for fat catchers. That was the source of this conflict. For Billy
and Paul and, to a slightly lesser extent, Erik and Chris, a young player is not what he looks like, or what
he might become, but what he has done. As elementary as that might sound to someone who knew
nothing about professional baseball, it counts as heresy here. The scouts even have a catch phrase for
what Billy and Paul are up to: “performance scouting.” “Performance scouting,” in scouting circles, is an
insult. It directly contradicts the baseball man’s view that a young player is what you can see him doing
in your mind’s eye. It argues that most of what’s important about a baseball player, maybe even
including his character, can be found in his statistics.
Supercrunchers
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
Human by Michael S. Gazzaniga
Your highlight at location 5435
In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the cofounders of Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing
company, made the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum
component cost doubles every twenty-four months. That means that every twenty-four months they
could double the number of transistors on a circuit without increasing the cost. That is exponential
growth. Carver Mead, a professor at Caltech, dubbed this observation Moore’s law, and it has been
viewed both as a prediction and a goal for growth in the technology industry. It continues to be fulfilled.
In the last sixty years, computation speed, measured in what are known as floating point operations per
second (FLOPS), has increased from 1 FLOPS to over 250 trillion FLOPS! As Henry Markram, project
director of IBM’s Blue Brain project (which we will talk about later), states, this is “by far the largest man-
made growth rate of any kind in the ~10,000 years of human civilization.”3 The graph of exponential
change, instead of gradually increasing continually as a linear graph would, gradually increases until a
critical point is reached and then there is an upturn such that the line becomes almost vertical. This
“knee” in the graph is where Kurzweil thinks we currently are in the rate of change that will occur owing
to the knowledge gained in these areas. He thinks we are not aware of it or prepared for it because we
have been in the more slowly progressing earlier stage of the graph and have been lulled into thinking
that the rate of change is linear.
What Have You Changed Your Mind About? by John Brockman
Your highlight at location 4288
I now believe that in the not too distant future the best forecasters will be not people but machines—ever
more capable “prediction engines” probing ever deeper into stochastic spaces. Indicators of this trend
are everywhere, from the rise of quantitative analysis in the financial sector to the emergence of
computer-based horizon scanning systems in use by governments around the world—and of course the
relentless advance of computer systems along the upward-sweeping curve of Moore’s Law. We already
have human-computer hybrids at work in the discovery/forecasting space, from Amazon’s Mechanical
Turk to the myriad online prediction markets. In time, we will recognize that these systems are an
intermediate step toward prediction engines, in much the same way that human “computers,” who once
performed the mathematical calculations on complex projects, were replaced by general-purpose
electronic digital computers. -- Paul Saffo's words.
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Power Law Distribution describes why so few people write for Wike and so few understand that the
Singularity is coming:
Your highlight at location 1608
The general form of a power law distribution appears in social settings when some set of items—users,
pictures, tags—is ranked by frequency of occurrence. You can rank a group of Flickr users by the
number of pictures they submit. You can rank a collection of pictures by the number of viewers. You can
rank tags by the number of pictures they are applied to. All of these graphs will be in the rough shape of
a power law distribution.
FAB by Neil Gershtenfeld
Moore's Law is decreasing not only the cost of software but also the cost of hardware.
A Life Decoded by Craig Venter
Exponential curve made the process of decoding DNA much shorter.
Wired for War by Peter Singer
Exponential robot progress.
Your highlight at location 2012
Hugo de Garis, the head of the StarBrain AI project, has written a cheerily titled article on this entitled
“Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators?” In it he writes, “Within a single human
generation, it will very probably be possible to store a single bit of information on a single atom.” If this
proves true, an object the size of a disc then would be able to hold a trillion trillion (a 1 with twenty-four
zeros after it) bits of information. By comparison, the human brain is created from a genome of roughly
twenty-three million bits of information. If computers can match this almost incomprehensible processing
speed with such amazing memory, the advantage that human brains have of being so parallel starts to
fall by the wayside.
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
The exponential rise of the computer is going to eliminate the need for logical sequential people.
Some people seem more comfortable with logical, sequential, computer-like reasoning. They tend to
become lawyers, accountants, and engineers. Other people are more comfortable with holistic, intuitive,
and nonlinear reasoning. They tend to become inventors, entertainers, and counselors. And these
individual inclinations go on to shape families, institutions, and societies.
Your highlight at location 644
So an array of software and online programs has emerged that allow patients to answer a series of
questions on their computer screens and arrive at a preliminary diagnosis without the assistance of a
physician. Health care consumers have begun to use such tools both to “figure out their risk of serious
diseases—such as heart failure, coronary artery disease and some of the most common cancers—[and]
to make life-and-death treatment decisions once they are diagnosed,” reports the Wall Street Journal.29
At the same time, there’s been an explosion of electronic databases of medical and health information.
In a typical year, about 100 million people worldwide go online for health and medical information and
visit more than 23,000 medical Web sites.30 As patients self-diagnose and tap the same reservoir of
information available to physicians, these tools are transforming the doctor’s role from omniscient
purveyor of solutions to empathic advisor on options. Of course, the day-to-day work of physicians often
involves challenges too complex for software alone—and we’ll still rely on experienced doctors to
diagnose unusual diseases. But, as I’ll show later in this book, these developments are changing the
emphasis of many medical practices—away from routine, analytical, and information-based work and
toward empathy, narrative medicine, and holistic care.
Computers using statistics are going to out-think humans.
Moneyball
Your highlight at location 735
The statistics enabled you to find your way past all sorts of sight-based scouting prejudices: the
scouting dislike of short right-handed pitchers, for instance, or the scouting distrust of skinny little guys
who get on base. Or the scouting distaste for fat catchers. That was the source of this conflict. For Billy
and Paul and, to a slightly lesser extent, Erik and Chris, a young player is not what he looks like, or what
he might become, but what he has done. As elementary as that might sound to someone who knew
nothing about professional baseball, it counts as heresy here. The scouts even have a catch phrase for
what Billy and Paul are up to: “performance scouting.” “Performance scouting,” in scouting circles, is an
insult. It directly contradicts the baseball man’s view that a young player is what you can see him doing
in your mind’s eye. It argues that most of what’s important about a baseball player, maybe even
including his character, can be found in his statistics.
Supercrunchers
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil
 | |  | |  |