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

by Damien Broderick

Book Overview

The rate at which technology is changing our world--not just on a global level like space travel and instant worldwide communications but on the level of what we choose to wear, where we live, and what we eat--is staggeringly fast and getting faster all the time. The rate of change has become so fast that a concept that started off sounding like science fiction has become a widely expected outcome in the near future - a singularity referred to as...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031287782X
• ISBN13: 9780312877828
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Science non-fiction that's stranger than fiction.

I picked this book up because I'm an futurist info-junkie. My expectations were modest, the reviews for this were good, but not stellar. However, after just a handful of pages I was completely hooked (I read this book in a night, a very long, very late night). Damien Brodericks' book "The Spike" screams for our immediate attention to an impending convergence of a handful of rapidly developing technologies (principally nanotechnology, biotechnology, networking, and Artificial Intelligence), each revolutionary on their own, but combined, transcendental; Broderick calls that convergence "the spike".The concept alone is worth the read. Seldom do most people consider just where humanity now stands in relation to technology and its utility. Where, for example, transportation technology for all but a few thousand years of almost 3 million was our feet and crude "shoes" that permitted 3 mile per hour travel, then animals, chariots, etc. up until about two hundred years ago where a train could propel people at 20 miles per hour, then, "within living memory of the elderly", cars enabled ever faster travel, then planes, jets, rockets, now technologies allow for video conferencing at light speed. Broderick points out that if you put that progress on a chart, and drew out just the last 300,000 years of mankinds progress in transport speed increases, you'd see a flat line until you get to the furthest edge of the graph, then a near vertical spike.Cool stuff.And much cooler when you consider that (in his well reasoned belief) if you were to draw out a graph starting 100 years ago, and ending one hundred years from now, we'd find ourselves right at the very beginnings of an incline into a technological spike that will (barring some catostrophic event) fundamentally re-landscape humans (and what it means to be human) in such a material way, you could argue that we wouldn't really remain human at all...This is very approachable science, Broderick, unlike many other writers attempting to translate the almost imponderable and ever increasing torrent of science from the frontier, does allot of digesting for us in this book. So, while a Matt Ridley (author of "Genome" and "Nature Via Nurture" among others) might be more inclined to try and fill in more factual basis to cement understanding of a particular science, Broderick casts a justifiably wide net over a whole constellation of different scientific disciplines; and, as a consequence, doesn't go into great detail in giving a full "3D" view of each very interesting technology. This will no-doubt leave some more scientific-minded readers wanting for more in the "basis department". For that class, I'd suggest Ridley, but also writers like Hans Moravec (writer of "Robot"), or Ray Kurzweil, author of "The Age of Spiritual Machines". "The Spike" offers optimistic and intensly interesting scenarios for the prospect of a better life in the future as well as realistic concerns that we should start to seriously thin

Well Written Examination of Future Trends

For anyone interested in where technology is helping to drive the human species and society, The Spike by Damien Broderick is one of the best books to come along so far. Undoubtedly written by someone who readily embraces the positive possibilities for the future of humanity, it nonetheless outlines many of the potential dangers and problems confronting us as exponential change impacts our world over the next few decades. He covers today's major technologies and technological trends in a highly readable and entertaining manner and presents perspectives on our near-future that are reasonable, well documented, and thought provoking. Not science fiction, this book is a valuable and practical contribution to the continuing and creative and very important dialog on where our world is ultimately headed. Highly recommended.

Future Shock!

The 'Spike', also known as the 'Singularity', is simply science and technological advances happening so rapidly that they appear as an almost vertical line when charted against the passage of time. Advances in disparate fields tend to feed on each other in a synergistic manner, making the graph of the Spike even steeper. We seem to be on the threshold of possibilities that will transform human life on the planet and beyond past most peoples' wildest imaginations. Damien Broderick presents a very balanced view, giving both the optimists and pesimists their viewpoints. According to Broderick, advanced artificial intelligences and nanotechnology may be two of the technologies that will predominate when the Spike arrives, but he says there probably will also be much we can't even conceive of now. Broderick writes that the Spike is not inevitable, as a disaster of one kind or another may overtake us, but most likely we will see one. If a Spike does take place it could transform everything about us, it would make for very interesting times indeed. Post Spike possibilities include immortal life for us, and a posthuman life throughout the cosmos, nano-manufacture of almost anything we want for free or nearly free, to the gray goo scenario in which nanobots are set free on the planet to reduce everything, including us, back to their component atoms. But the Luddites are wrong, we cannot stop or turn back, the promises of these technologies are just too great, and Broderick discusses this area superbly. Damien Broderick quotes several prominent researchers in various relevant fields of science and technology, their views make excellent reading, and several of them give guesses as to when a Spike may occur, but in the end we can only surmise the barest outline a Spike may take. As Broderick states in the book, "we can't yet imagine the shape of things to come". This is a book well worth reading, with extensive notes and suggested further reading at the back of the volume.

Profiles of an Even Better Future

This book could be considered an update of Arthur C. Clarke's (yes THE Arthur C. Clarke) landmark 1962 study entitled Profiles of the Future. Dr. Broderick looks at the progress made in the nearly four decades since Profiles, and presents the view from the early 21st century. The two books deal with similar subject matter, but to contrast the works, Clarke's stunning work is entirely focussed on the science and technological advances facing humanity, whereas Broderick takes a rather more broad view, considering some of the consequences of progress, as well as making some fearless specific predictions, such as the ones found on page 87. This book will be one you may take down from your shelf occasionally for the next 40 years, looking up some specific thing you know you read there, then getting sidetracked, like you always did as a child when looking up something in the encyclopedia. (Remember those? We used them before the Web.) Whereas Clarke is from a space science and engineering background Damien Broderick's art springs from a literary and scientific palatte of colors. The Spike is a book that gains momentum as it goes along, so that it actually seems to have a shape to it, like an upwardly reaching... spike. Buy it, read it, find out where the dedicated futurists think we are heading and what happens when we get there.

Accelerating Toward the Future

We are already in the early stages of a transition that will radically alter civilization and even the human species itself. The Spike, by cultural theorist and science writer Damien Broderick, offers a fast-paced survey of cutting-edge science today and in the not-so-distant future. 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. Dr. 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 molecular genetics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Dr. 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