Dear Mr. Kurzweil,
I am Lorand Kedves, 41, "all-round programmer" from system analysis to typing code in various areas, languages and environments. I worked on AI field before 2000 (our company, Mindmaker/Cygron won PC Week's Best of Comdex award in Las Vegas with DataScope); worked on national data management systems in Hungary, have experience in telco environment, etc. As a hobby project, I work on the programming environment which "could be the only way to build Skynet" if that is possible at all. This is not a joke, today I use a small subset of those ideas in real life development.
After this introduction, you may not flush the following notice immediately.
Singularity is also in my focus, but in a very different way. After reading the "Singularity Q&A" on your website, I think you are simply, ultimately wrong.
You totally forget about the fundamental difference between human brain and computer (remember: I have trained my brain to merge with computers for 20 years, full time). You seem to want to get rid of your own humanity - but hey! This is our hardware! Your approach is perfectly reflected in out planet: dreaming about the techno-future, but leave chemical, radiation, energy (climate change), social and political (the next cold war is coming) pollution everywhere. You are a brilliant person, but seem to forget that we must survive the next few years first, with the current population, before going towards your dreams (or something else that we are unable to dream about).
For me, singularity is here. We, as human beings are able to break the limits of space and time literally: we build partnership, our life is changed by people lived thousands of years ago, on the other end of the planet, whose language we don't know. Our civilization as a whole, and we as individuals, meet the singularity of knowledge, or to say, memetic and control singularity. But we are not prepared for that, and that is really dangerous.
Here is a short lecture about these concepts: Taste of Luck
I am interested in your view about "my singularity", or my critic on yours.
Thank you
Lorand Kedves
[edited: links and references added]
