Advantages And Disadvantages Of Technology
THE ROAD TO THE 21ST CENTURY HAS BROUGHT MANY CHANGES in the way we work, conduct our private lives, and do business. And the Internet is at the center of it all. That claim isn't meant to steal any thunder from other advances, but the Internet has changed not only how we communicate but also when, where, and how often.
Other technologies are also heralding a new era. Distance is virtually eliminated with high-speed digital connections; electronic commerce is helping small businesses compete with large corporations worldwide. Wireless devices are no longer luxuries but necessities in a fast-moving marketplace. And biology is slowly but seamlessly meshing with technology. Computing systems that once occupied entire rooms now fit in the palms of our hands.
With so many changes occurring, it's easy to get overwhelmed. To help you keep pace, we've looked at five technologies that are driving change in business and in everyday life.
We'll eat whatever we want but never get fat. Real estate will be virtual. Cheap, tiny computers will be smarter than we are. Energy demands will be met by nanoscale renewable technologies. We'll choose when, and if, we'll die. Many organs will be irrelevant, we'll be able to select from alternate personalities, and those among us who are ''software-based" will be a decade or two away from being ''able to expand [our] thinking without limit."
Is this utopia? A new science fiction movie? An optimistic scenario for human life in the year 2500?
Try 2030. It is a prediction evangelized in intense detail by Ray Kurzweil in his staggering new 650-plus-page treatise, ''The Singularity Is Near." Kurzweil, a renowned computer scientist and inventor of, among other things, the flatbed scanner, argues that our society is facing an imminent and overwhelming transformation called the Singularity.
The Singularity is, in Kurzweil's words, ''a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that...
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