Will My PC Be Smarter Than I Am?
November 9, 2001 by Ray Kurzweil
Once we learn how to map the brain and make computers fast enough to simulate it, all bets are off.… read more
essays collection
Excerpts from “One Half of a Manifesto”
July 30, 2001 by Jaron Lanier
Does the optimism of technologists blur the question of quantitative improvements in hardware versus a lack of qualititative improvements in software? Do they point the way towards an eschatological cataclysm in which doom is imminent?… read more
Postscript Re: Ray Kurzweil
July 30, 2001 by Jaron Lanier
This postscript to his One Half of a Manifesto is a further discussion and criticism of exponential trends. Do these trends exist as predictive models, or are we playing connect-the-dots based upon an arbitrary selection of milestones and paradigm shifts?… read more
The Central Metaphor of Everything?
December 4, 2001 by Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier’s Edge article takes a skeptical look at Moore’s Law and its application to trends outside of computer hardware. Will computers become smarter than us in twenty years? Is the computational metaphor actually impeding progress?… read more
Man-Computer Symbiosis
December 11, 2001 by J.C.R. Licklider
Written in 1960, this essay foresaw the growing dependence upon computers for more and more intelligent functions, and an age of human/computer interdependence in which the distinction between the two becomes increasingly blurred.… read more
How Fast, How Small and How Powerful? Moore’s Law and the Ultimate Laptop
August 2, 2001 by Seth Lloyd
A laptop that looks like a thermonuclear explosion inside of a liter bottle of coca cola? Or a black hole? Read Seth Lloyd’s follow up to a Nature article that pushes Moore’s Law to the limit.… read more
Is the universe a quantum computer?
January 21, 2002 by Seth Lloyd
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” Seth Lloyd asks: Is the universe a quantum computer?… read more
The Computational Universe
October 25, 2002 by Seth Lloyd
The amount of information you could process if you were to use all the energy and matter of the universe is 10^90 bits and the number of elementary operations that it can have performed since the Big Bang is about 10^120 ops. Perhaps the universe is itself a computer and what it’s doing is performing a computation. If so, that’s why the universe is so complex and these numbers say how big that computation is. Also, that means Douglas Adams was right (the answer is “42″).… read more
Intelligence Augmentation
August 6, 2001 by Pattie Maes
Machine consciousness may not be a matter of replicating total human thought capacity–it may come in several small, specialized parts. In this discussion with the Edge’s John Brockman, Pattie Maes discusses IA (Intelligence Augmentation) as opposed to AI.… read more
How can a small number of genes build a complex mental machine?
January 21, 2002 by Gary F. Marcus
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” Gary F. Marcus asks: how can genes build a mental machine?… read more