Perhaps the most fascinating thing about reading this (a mere!) two years later is how much its speculative future, vivid and unsettling portrayal notwithstanding, is almost certainly no longer a possibility for ours. Imagine, simulating an entire human brain to perform tasks it turns out need only a vague, brute-forced approximation of our language centers!<p>It's like Jules Verne imagining, in exquisitely plausible detail, a flying machine whose many complex mechanisms and articulations at last allow man to fly like the birds – only a few years before the Wright brothers prove all you need is a fixed wing, a few cleverly-placed flaps, and enough thrust.