Technological Singularity and the Future of Information and Libraries

摘要

In 2003, ONLINE published my article on the future of computers in which I noted that "like a fast-moving storm on the horizon, we are facing perhaps the most challenging evolutions of technology and society in coming decades" leading to a "third age" in which "advances in nanotechnology along with biological computing" and genomics would bring computers to-what was then -unimagined new levels ("Nanotechnology, Genomics, and Biological Computing: The 21st Century World of Computers, November/ December 2003, pp. 26-31). Now, a little more than 12 years later, we are seeing the development of computing devices far smaller and infinitely more powerful than could be imagined back then-and even now. The part of the article that seemed to draw the most attention at the time was the potential for "using human or animal brains as computers"; today, this is a reality.