The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed By Rapidly Advancing Technologies (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It rushes at you, the future..." (more)
Key Phrases: goop pool, genie machine, utility fog, Big Bang, Omega Point, Vernor Vinge (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If we are to believe the projections outlined in Damien Broderick's The Spike, the acceleration of change is increasing so sharply that the future is not just unknowable but unrecognizable. Dr. Broderick pulls together his vast learning to expand on Vernor Vinge's notion of the technological Singularity and to share with us his necessarily clouded vision of a posthuman future. Writing with a rare enthusiasm unmuted by years of dystopian fiction and news reports, Broderick peels back the layers of jargon enshrouding recent advances in nanotech, biotech, and all the other tech that's daring us to keep up.

It's hard for the reader to avoid feeling swept up in the rush of novelty, and that of course is the author's point. As we learn to modify even our deepest natures, how can we ever hope to maintain intellectual distance from our technology? Forewarned is forearmed, and Broderick hopes that awareness of the maelstrom will keep us from drowning; this might be the best cure for post-millennial despair. In any case, not everyone believes that the world of 2050 will be incomprehensible to those of us who lived through part of the 20th century. Will the curve spike, as Broderick suggests, or will it plateau? We should know in relatively little time, as we find ourselves either downloaded into space-traveling robots or watching the latest incarnation of holographic Star Trek. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Is technological change advancing so rapidly that we can no longer chart its progress? Are we careening ever closer to the point that scientists have dubbed "the singularity," the moment when the pace of innovation will lead to changes so profound that attempting to envision the future becomes an impossible dream? According to Broderick (The Last Mortal Generation; Theory and Its Discontents), the answer is a resounding and enthusiastic yes. As he points out, the rate of scientific change has increased ("spiked") with exponential rapidity over the past 500 years; everyday machines such as personal computers already have microprocessing capacities that far surpass anything originally predicted when they were first invented. Virtual reality applications are routinely used in the operating room, while cloning has entered our world with astonishing speed. So why not, in the extremely near future, "smart paint" that changes color on command and converts light to electricity when no one is in the room? Some of the changes anticipated by Broderick include science-fiction staples such as uploading and copying one's consciousness; freezing terminally ill bodies for revival in the more medically sophisticated future; and so-called "Santa Claus machines," which can build almost anything "washing machines or teacups or automobiles or starships" out of highly abundant, naturally occurring materials. Broderick's freewheeling analysis of the "spike" a phenomenon already dubiously questioned, he admits, in otherwise sympathetic scientific circles may help bring this debate to a more mainstream audience, although his writing, despite its conversational tone, may still have too specialized a scientific and technological vocabulary for the average general reader. (Mar.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (February 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031287782X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312877828
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #792,441 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, basically right but bad critique, October 14, 2002

By	Gary R. Bradski (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed By Rapidly Advancing Technologies (Hardcover)

Damien's Spike is at very least an entertaining read -- somewhat like an amusement park thrill ride "we're going to be scanned into computers and live on as ever expanding immortal intelligences and/or exceeded by wild run away artificial intelligences if we don't get turned into nano gray-goo before then, Weeeeeooo..." and around and around the ride goes.

Thus, it's easy not to take the subject matter very seriously...if I didn't see whispers of the spike in my work and field. The basic premise of the book, and other's like it such as "Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil, is that technology doesn't just advance linearly, it feeds back upon itself. For example: faster computers let people simulate and explore new computer architectures and new materials which in turn help overcome bottleneck's to developing ever faster computers. Like interest payments on your money, technology lends itself to compound, not just linear growth. We'll, that's spike enough, but the further argument is that the day will come when a computer program will be able to figure out how to make itself function better/smarter and what new hardware changes it needs to run faster. Or once robots can design and build better robots, the compounding will itself compound and the rate of change goes hyper-exponential.
I see this in my own work -- teraflop (T trillion floating point operations per second) machines will be on your lap before the decade is out. These will double for several cycles even if semiconductor technology hits a heat or quantum wall. But cheap 1, 2, 4 teraflop machines on every researcher's desk will cause material breakthroughs or trigger post-silicon computing and then 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 teraflop (T) machines are next...I put the date of 128 teraflops as 2022. Could go faster due to above advancement cycle, could slip 10 years if post-silicon is needed and harder than expected. 128 T is my (not Damien's) magic number because some claim ... that the human brain averages ~4 T, but since we don't understand the nuances of intelligence, I figure we can brute force by approximating at something like the rule of thumb where you can start relying on the law of large numbers in statistical sampling, or a factor of ~30. 4*30 T = 120 T.
If robotic advances keep coming, especially the advent of strong, fast artificial muscle fiber ... we're looking at a very strange world in the 2020's. Take one example: When will the "war on terrorism" end? How about 2025 when we can mass produce robot spies and soldiers in weeks for a ~$2000 a pop while fanatics still take 12-25 years and a minimum of $25K even at 3rd world rates? Yes, they might be able to steal a few, just like they can steal a few airplanes, but techno societies will be able to produce millions.
Downsides of the book:
=================
Spends time showing past attempts at extrapolating curves that failed (speed of transport should essentially be infinite by now, power per person should be 1 sun apiece), but then dismisses the possibility of misreading the curves here. "This time for sure".

Dwells on "minting" where especially nano-robots can make themselves and then turn around and make you anything you want. Everything will be free. Then mentions that things like brewing bear that is already essentially nano (yeast)-engineering of just this sort and last I checked, beer is not free. But...this time it's different.

Little critique of scanning and uploading the brain other than having some moral/emotional qualms if the upload is destructive of the original body. Well, I've got some basic critiques.
(1) You're brain isn't going to be very happy, or at least effective if you are simulated in a computer and not running a robot body well matched to our limitations: 2 legs, 2 arms, basic degrees of freedom in motion, because so much of our brain is built premised on the nature of our body, eyes, senses.
(2) The ability to download other's knowledge is also fundamentally limited. You can train of a pattern recognition machines, but the structure tends to get fixed at which time it can't just incorporate scads of new knowledge without flushing the old. This is a fundamental limitation, not fast hardware. The "you" that is "you" will get washed out in the great accelerated interchange of knowledge and so where's the immortality other than in the general sense that we already have: "not us as individuals, but all of life". Your choice is to stay much unchanged and heavily bored by the eons or to loose/replace the you that is you.

Ah well. End of review:

In actuality, this book better serves as a sort of entertaining reference to the scientists and philosophers working in the field. So I recommend it -- 4 stars, good airplane read, good to have sitting nearby to remember who you want to look up on Google.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Future Shock!, April 30, 2001

By	Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed By Rapidly Advancing Technologies (Hardcover)

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.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fasten Your Seatbelts, June 4, 2001

By	J. Michael Gallipo (Portsmouth, NH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed By Rapidly Advancing Technologies (Hardcover)

In "The Spike," Damien Broderick has written an interesting, thought provoking, if sometimes frustrating book. The title of the book refers to what occurs on the right hand edge of any graph showing exponential growth. His thesis is that within the next 50 years, one or more technologies (nanotech, artificial intelligence, etc) will hit the spike and the world, and humanity itself, will be transformed beyond recognition.

Because the book covers possible scenarios ranging from the probable to the almost absurd, it will be easy for many to dismiss the entire thing as a lot of nonsense. But I think that would be a mistake. There is much in this book that should be thought provoking, even if you reject some of the wilder ideas. It is easy to forget sometimes that the pace of change is speeding up dramatically. As recently as 10 years ago, the worldwide web (at least as we all know it today) did not exist - now try and imagine your life without it!

I do regret that Mr. Broderick seems to have largely bought into the typical left-wing rubbish about how much worse off the poor (or maybe all of us) are today than they were in the past. Would that be the past of pre-civil rights sharecroppers in the South? Or maybe the past of the wave of immigrants of the late 19th/early 20th century described by Upton Sinclair and his contemporaries? And I have to confess that I am still struggling with the math that says a guaranteed stipend from the government of $25,000 for a family of four would "cost as much a small war." Last time I checked, 2.5 trillion dollars was a lot! Thankfully in other places in the book, Mr. Broderick seems to understand these complaints - for example when he asks the reader to imagine being in medieval Paris or Pharonic Egypt (as a member of the working classes).

I also wish Mr. Broderick had devoted more pages to the possible backlash against technology we have witnessed in the past few years (e.g., the fight over genetically modified food). But overall those are fairly modest quibbles to what is otherwise a truly thought-provoking book. The human mind has trouble grappling with truly large numbers - be it the size of the universe or the exponential growth of computer processing capability. This book will get you thinking about the possibilities and consequences of those numbers.