LINKS TO ARTICLES AND REVIEWS::


Comment by Robert Ettinger (below)

Barbara Lamar's review (below)

Michael Nielson's review of 1997 edition.

Interview With Damien Broderick - Into the Future
by Carol Fripp

Interview With Damien Broderick by Ramona Koval

Review by Race Matthews of 1997 edition


Review of Three Books by Damien Broderick
Alan Olding


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Robert Ettinger, cryonics pioneer, on The Spike (1997 edition): 

          Yesterday I posted some comments on Ray Kurzweil's recent book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. Today I want to say a little about a competing book, Damien Broderick's The Spike, subtitled Accelerating Into the Unimaginable Future, published in 1997 by Reed in Australia. 
          As writing projects, the two books are very similar, looking at technological acceleration into the next century and beyond, including computers and nanotech and their potential effects on human life and thought.  As to credentials, Kurzweil has the advantage of hands-on personal contributions to existing technology, with patents etc. Broderick is primarily a writer in science and science fiction, with over twenty books published as well as many articles. He has an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in literature and science from Deakin University. But the books must stand on their own, and in my opinion Broderick not only did it earlier, but did it better. He has more range, more balance, and more meticulous accuracy. And while Kurzweil is no slouch as a writer, Broderick is better--more graceful and gifted in language, and just as entertaining. 

 

 

Review of The Spike
How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies

    We are already in the early stages of a transition that will radically alter civilization and even the human species itself. The Spike, by Australia’s respected cultural theorist and science writer Damien Broderick, offers an insightful survey of cutting-edge science of today and the not-so-distant future. First published in Australia in 1997, The Spike has been thoroughly updated for its release in the USA.
   Advances in several fields of applied science are following a course whose graphs have remained relatively flat throughout human history but are suddenly becoming steeper. If current trends continue, the graphs will become almost vertical within the next thirty to fifty years. Broderick refers to this interval of rapid change as The Spike, because that’s what the graphs resemble.
   Probably the most commonly known of these trends Is Moore’s Law, which holds that computing power (expressed as the number of components on an integrated circuit) per dollar will double every eighteen months to two years. The arithmetic is easy to do. Start with 2 x 1 = 2; 2 x 2 = 4; 2 x 4 = 8; by the time you’ve repeated the multiplication process twenty times you’ve increased computing power by a factor of a million, and the twenty-first multiplication increases it by a million more. Although trends do not always continue to the runaway Spike stage, there are no obvious reasons to anticipate that current growth will slow significantly within the next thirty years.
      Because The Spike represents such a dramatic shift in the rate of technological advance, it is impossible to accurately predict what the post-Spike world will be like, but by projecting existing trends into the future experts can make educated guesses. The three fields which are likely to have the greatest impact on the future are biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Broderick provides an intriguing tour of some of the technological wonders that may be part of our reality later this century.
      Genetic engineering, more fully covered in Broderick’s book The Last Mortal Generation, could abolish disease, aging, and even death
      Molecular Nanotechnology, or minting (from the initials MNT), may allow the assembly of goods at the molecular level. Using minting, you could produce "whatever you want to build, if you have the plan and the laws of physics don’t forbid it." With self-replicating assemblers, finished products could be had for little more than the cost of the raw materials. Take diamonds. They’re made of carbon, and carbon is cheap. The minting process could use diamond, with a strength-to-weight ratio fifty times greater than steel, to fashion the frames of high-rise buildings or space stations. A serving of perfectly aged and roasted prime rib could be constructed atom by atom. Walkways could be paved with photovoltaic cells.
      Artificial Intelligence, or AI, might take the form of a PC with the reasoning power of the human mind; or a self-aware Internet; or a Super Intelligent machine beside which a human would seem incredibly slow and stupid. Humans could enhance their brains by linking them to other brains or to machines. Or human personalities could be uploaded to machines. The last two possibilities add new dimensions to the question of self-identity.
      Such things as diamond sky scrapers and linked human brains may seem more like fantasy than science, but they are based on foreseeable development of existing technology. And shockingly, such advanced development could take place within the next fifty years. Mathematician Vernor Vinge predicts a spike some time between 2030 and 2100 for AI, and graphs of trends in several other fields of applied science converge around the year 2050.
      While Broderick’s sweeping account of the current and possible future states of technology is wonderfully exciting, the most valuable aspect of The Spike may be the questions it raises about technology’s impact on human society. The technological spike may occur later than predicted, or not at all; but technology will continue a rapid acceleration that will have an effect on every aspect of human life.
      Many of our social institutions are already obsolete, and the situation will only grow worse as time goes by unless we make a greater effort to keep up with our technology. Even benefits such as free food and shelter would result in major social upheaval. What happens when there are no longer jobs? What would a society of immortal people be like? Should intelligent machines enjoy human rights? Some readers will not agree with Broderick’s tentative answers, and he makes it clear that he is not attempting to do more than continue a discussion he began with the publication of the first edition of The Spike. The important thing is that other people including lawmakers, educators, social scientists join in and contribute to the discussion. Overall Broderick seems to be optimistic about the ability of our species to get our act together. "Yes, science is made by humans," he writes, "and its knowledge is contaminated by our local limitations. But we cup our hands, and the cosmos fills them to overflowing."

Review by Barbara Lamar

 

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