[...] It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between magazines like New Scientist and magazines like SFX. Given that nowadays most of us have a device remarkably similar to a Star Trek communicator — and one, moreover, that doesn’t require Lieutenant Uhura on the bridge acting as exchange operator —  the conceit of this book is neat: how science-fictional is our future going to be? Beginning with mid-life-ish musings… read more

When the Singularity arrives in 2045, Ray Kurzweil will finally be infallible… One of Kurzweil’s arguments in his defense: he predicted the Internet would “take off” in the late 1980s, when few people believed that.

(Actually, a lot of college campuses and even some high schools were actively on the net in the late 1980s, and you already had networks of FTP sites and Gophers and so on.) On the… read more

The author, inventor, and futurist says accelerating technology will soon bring us immortality — and all the energy the earth requires. Emmy Award-winning journalist Charlie Rose is the host of Charlie Rose, the nightly PBS program.

I’m interested in this notion of a coming singularity — computers surpassing humans — and your obsession with immortality. What led you there?

I really started with this exploration of where technology… read more