From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 15:16:35 MST
On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Camp, Christopher wrote:
> Admittedly this is a tall order and no single book may currently exist. My
> current top choice is Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual machines but maybe there
> is a better option out there.
Chris,
I haven't read AoSM but I think it would be slanted heavily to the AI
side of things, without much consideration that this path may not be
the one we take (it isn't a "necessary" component). The Great Mambo
Chicken is certainly interesting and covers a great deal of territory
but may lack depth in certain areas.
"The Spike" by Damien may be the best broad brush stroke work available
at this time. If you want to lean more towards the science, far
futuristic side, both Robert Freitas and I like works by Linda Nagata,
esp. "Vast". Efforts by Greg Egan, e.g. Permutation City, are certainly
worthy of consideration.
Finally, "Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds" by Paul & Cox
is a pretty good look at things. In general, I'd put Kurzweil ~=
Moravec ~= Paul & Cox -- you don't get a robust picture without
reading all of them because they each have their biases. The Regis
and Broderick works are probably better for non-technical people.
Robert
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