Post-humans are showing up all the time. I intend to evolve again on July 11, when I get equipped with my connection to the hive mind... er, I mean my always-on Wikipedia appliance, courtesy of Apple.<p>Admittedly, it won't be that impressive. If I could somehow take my iPhone back in time (with a trans-temporal wireless network connection, of course) to play Trivial Pursuit against my high-school-aged self, then it would be obvious how different my augmented self is from my prior self. (And equally obvious that skill at Trivial Pursuit, which used to be considered akin to being smart, is now an oddball exercise, like building furniture using nothing but a jackknife, or starting a fire without matches. We don't have to pursue trivia anymore. We caught it. It's sitting here in this box.)<p>But, as it happens, I'm actually late to the iPhone party, and when I get one nobody will care. It is as Bruce Sterling said: "the Singularity is banal". Post-singular creatures won't be all that impressed with themselves, just as the first human to utter a grammatical sentence didn't really stop to marvel at it. She was probably too busy trying to get her friend to pass her a handful of walnuts.
FTA:<p><i>These critics obviously have not read my book and have not read this chapter because they do not respond to anything I’ve written. It is as if they’ve just heard a superficial presentation of these ideas and respond without any engagement of the extensive discussion that has already taken place about these issues.</i><p>And now we know how Kurzweil says RTFA.
But what happens a year or two after that? The best answer to the question, “Will computers ever be as smart as humans?” is probably “Yes, but only briefly.”<p>what does that mean? that it then will be much smarter?
Post-Humans don't want to live forever. They are capable of detatching themselves from their egos and accepting death.<p>This kurzweil guy is rocking the same fear of death vibe (a prehuman drive for survival) that keep most traditionally relgious people from experiencing the actual spiritual evolution that the real post humans will go through. Kurzweil is just basing his mythology to suppress the fear of death on tech and sci fi themes rather then Christian myths.