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


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.


From Booklist
These days it's almost too easy to write a book about the promises and dangers of new technology. It seems science is coming up with new things before we can even begin to adjust to the last batch of inventions, thus making it inevitable to be afraid of what's just around the corner. Broderick, however, doesn't appear interested in getting us all worked up over what lies ahead; instead, he sets out to calm us down. His premise is that even though our lives are about to be changed in dramatic ways by the implementation of ideas that once seemed like the most way-out science fiction (artificial intelligence, even versions of immortality), the impact of those changes doesn't have to be traumatic. Broderick treats technological change as the next step in human evolution and provides a compelling version of how we stand to change as a species in the next few years. Fascinating stuff from a capable writer of popular science. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Named after the simple visual image represented by a line on a graph of the world's scientific progress rapidly jutting upward, Broderick's The Spike is where history as we know it comes to an end. . . . A convincing account, explicating numerous trends and research programs admirably and entertainingly."--Artbyte Magazine

"A crash course to a wonderful, frightening world."--Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia)



Book Description
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 The Spike.

At that point of singularity, the cumulative changes on all fronts will affect the existence of humanity as a species and cause a leap of evolution into a new state of being.

On the other side of that divide, intelligence will be freed from the constraints of the flesh; machines will achieve a level of intelligence in excess of our own and boundless in its ultimate potential; engineering will take place at the level of molecular reconstruction, which will allow everything from food to building materials to be assembled as needed from microscopic components rather than grown or manufactured; we'll all become effectively immortal by either digitizing and uploading our minds into organic machines or by transforming our bodies into illness-free, undecaying exemplars of permanent health and vitality.

The results of all these changes will be unimaginable social dislocation, a complete restructuring of human society and a great leap forward into a dazzlingly transcendent future that even SF writers have been too timid to imagine.



Download Description
This is a rewritten and updated text of the book published two years ago in Australia and the UK. It is a popular science work, a bit heavy on the science, but still within the range of the readership of Discover and Scientific American. It explores the idea of "the Singularity", proposed by Vernor Vinge, the idea that scientific change is accelerating at such a rapidly increasing rate that within fifteen to forty years (experts disagree) our existence will be so thoroughly transformed as to be unknowable and unpredictable. Three areas, in particular, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and life extension/immortality are covered as part of the survey of how human life is going to change radically.


About the Author
Damien Broderick is a noted Australian critic and scholar with an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in literature and science. He has published several SF novels and another important speculative science work, The Last Mortal Generation. He lives in Australia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The future is going to be radically different, and very soon now. How different? Let Damien Broderick tell you. Human life and the human condition are changing rapidly as we enter the new century, and is about to change even faster and more radically. Dazzling scientific breakthroughs are changing how long we may live, where we live, how we dress, how we communicate, how we work and what work we do, and even how we think and imagine. Scientist Vernor Vinge proposed that humanity is approaching what he called the Singularity and what Broderick renames the Spike: that moment in human history that is rapidly approaching when heretofore unimaginable changes—the advent of artificial intelligene, of human immortality, of nanotechnology, are just a few of the changes—occur with such rapidity and number that the human race will be transformed—or destroyed. And that moment, many experts predict, is almost upon us. This is the book of wonders and dangers, that brings is all together to stretch our minds.

About the Author:Damien Broderick, a noted Austrailian critic and scholar with an interdisiplinary PhD in literature and science, lives in Melbourne, Austrailia.

SYNOPSIS

This book explores the idea that scientific change is accelerating at such a rapidly increasing rate that within fifteen to forty years, our existence will be so thoroughly transformed as to be unknowable and unpredictable.

FROM THE CRITICS

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 Cahners Business Information.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Since this chapter was written, these ideas have been developed in great detail by writers such as Eric Drexler (The Engines of Creation, 1986) and Damien Broderick (The Spike, 1997). Damien's book will serve as a more imaginative sequel to the one you are reading now.—(From Arthur C. Clarke's classic Profiles of the Future, revised 1999) — Arthur C. Clarke