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Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The future isn't talked about enough. We need to be able to predict where we are going as a society so we can be ready for what's going to happen. Ray Kurzweil is a futurist. He spends all day every day thinking about the future. He is a genius inventor and he even invents things that we don't have the technology to make yet. If there's someone who can predict the future of technology, this is the guy. If you read his book, The Singularity is Near, you know exactly what "The Singularity" is and what is means for the human race. To put it in one sentence, it's the point where technology advances so exponentially fast that we can't even comprehend the growth. Ray explains that technology is advancing exponentially, and in a few decades, it will be advancing too fast for our own brains to comprehend. In order to keep up, we must merge with machines to enhance our intelligence and become immortal, super-intelligent, god-like cyborgs that will mostly spend time in full submersion virtual reality doing whatever our imaginations can imagine. The book explains everything that this documentary doesn't and if this doc interests you then I highly recommend the read. It's really hopeful stuff and people need to realize how important technology is going to become. We use our cellphones so much that they become a part of us. Sooner or later they will be a part of us. This is a very good summary to a very interesting subject. If you're very religious you may not like it due to its atheist theme, but people with an open mind will be very intrigued.

One part biography, one part brain food; as an appetizer to the thought path of noted futurist Ray Kurzweil, it can be difficult at times to separate fact from fragment over the course of this documentary. Kurzweil's favorite subject is one of increasing relevance, perhaps even by the minute: he seeks to pinpoint the moment of so-called "singularity," when mankind's built-in body chemistry will finally cross the line into his rapidly-developing technological and biological know-how. In short - how soon will we be able to back up our thoughts and feelings to an external hard drive, what sort of moral and philosophical arguments will be made for and against the practice, and where will the ball of wax roll after that debate is behind us? Though its post-production effects can get a bit over-the-top at times, reminding viewers more than once of the over-ambitious "world of tomorrow" predictions popular in the 1950s, the film is largely successful at fostering a curious sort of fascination with the current point in history and the staggering number of possibilities present within our lifetime. Kurzweil himself is to thank for much of that, as his smooth, relaxed speaking gives the impression that anything is possible, even if (as some of his detractors point out during the film's apex) he completely overlooks humanity's tendency to use such moments for evil causes as well as good. Intensely interesting stuff that effectively sows the seeds of conception.

(www.plasticpals.com) Regardless of what you think of Ray Kurzweil, his predictions, or the singularity, they certainly make interesting subjects for a documentary. If you're new to the singularity, Transcendent Man gives a primer on what exponential growth in information technology may bring for genetics, nano technology, and robotics – all within the coming decades. His predictions extrapolate on existing technologies and are vague enough that there's enough wiggle room to be convincing, at least superficially. Fascinating though these ideas may be, I felt the intimate portrait of Kurzweil himself is the real heart of the film. When you see how many supplements he takes on a daily basis, to say he's an eccentric would be putting things lightly.Kurzweil believes, for example, that he will one day bring his father back from the dead. Not a biblical resurrection, mind you, but one based on data. He believes that he will be able to feed information about his father's life (boxes and boxes collecting his father's personal letters, music compositions, and other documents), including his own memories of him, into a computer simulation that will magically recreate his persona. Most of the time, I felt like I had a good grasp on the concepts discussed in the film, but I take issue with this. Assuming that such a simulation were possible, it could never be accurate because it would be based entirely on Kurzweil's perception of his father and scraps of information that can't possibly reflect the depth of one's soul (for lack of a better term). Others' perceptions are usually quite different from how we see ourselves, and people usually have a hard time understanding themselves in the first place! I can play along and say that maybe, someday, we'll be able to "back up" our brains onto computers, but without those brains, a simulation could never be perfect. I'm sure such a simulation would have beneficial psychological effects for the bereaved, but that's beside the point. It seems to me that if Kurzweil is willing to delude himself into believing a simulation of his father is as good as the real thing (or at least good enough to claim it will cure his father's death), then he is probably deluding himself about a lot of other things, too. The film does give us some perspective through dissenting opinions, but everyone interviewed (with the exception of a religious radio talk show host) agrees to some extent with what Kurzweil has predicted.It's fun to think that an artificial intelligence may bootstrap itself, and our own limited brains, into higher and higher levels of consciousness. Yet I can't help but be reminded of that old adage, "anything that seems too good to be true probably is". Scientists with expertise outside of Kurzweil's domain (such as biology) argue that he oversimplifies things. Others say he is simply overly optimistic. I don't think either accusation is unjust. The film paints Kurzweil as traumatized by the loss of his father, and terrified of his own mortality. It isn't surprising that some accuse him of pseudo-scientific religious quackery of the sort Kurzweil dismisses as comfort for the dying.

Kurweil and many others have been chattering about their "Singularity" since at least the mid- 1990s. This is not the astronomical phenomenon, but is similarly dense. Basically, the notion that machines, specifically computers, will someday soon exceed the intelligence, cognitive, perceptual, analytical, and other mental powers of humans, and become "self-aware" and achieve consciousness. As seen in the Terminator movies, The Matrix, this has become one of the basic, stock tropes of science fiction, though it has been around in fundamentally the same form as present since the early 1980's, at least. Interesting stuff, and not only for entertainment purposes. And clearly machines will (and have already) become more able than humans at a wide range of tasks. From Big Blue beating Gary Kasparov at chess more than a dozen years ago, to welding robots in auto plants, machines do many things faster, and ultimately better than man. Persons under 20 have much less "data" in their heads, having come to rely so heavily on Wikipedia and Google (having been taught to do so by parents and teachers, in fact), and the online fact is up-to- the-minute and dead-accurate, isn't it? More reliable than what lies in your mind? No doubt computers will continue to increase in power, and in the influence they have on our lives. And we will come to rely even more on them than we do now.However, Kurweil, like almost all the other exponents of the Singularity, including those offering a much darker version of the future than Kurweil's, fails to understand and take account of a number of critical points. First, the notion of consciousness/awareness, and even of intelligence itself is poorly defined. Neurologists, brain scientists, psychologists, who study the human mind as a profession disagree fundamentally as to what these qualities even are, how they work, or why one individual human has them in abundance, another hardly at all. The human mind and brain may truly be the last frontier of science. We know less, understand less, about the brain and mind than we did of infectious disease in the early 19th century, and psychologists and brain scientists would agree. We are only making a bare beginning at understanding the brain and nervous system, and how it works, and how we actually use it.For Kurweil, or anyone else, to predict machines of any sort will attain human levels of consciousness, intelligence, or thought by 2040, or even by 2080 (two frequently cited dates) is a patent absurdity which takes no account of the state of neuro-science and psychology. Who will design or program this machine that emulates, then exceeds, the human brain/mind? In order to make a copy, you have to understand the original in every nuance. Not the kludgy, narrow silliness of "Eliza" or "Racter", but something that can reliably pass a Turing test and also learn. And as for self-awareness, that would be a trick, wouldn't it? You'd need some sort of reverse Turing test to apply to the machine. That's Kurweil's problem, and that of his colleagues. They are, none of them, professionals in medicine, psychology, brain science, or neurology, nor do any of them (that I am aware of) have ANY training in these disciplines. And until brain science advances a GREAT deal, I fear there is little hope of a machine that even approaches human consciousness, nor general ability and ADAPTABILITY and the ability to LEARN. For focused, targeted tasks there are super-human machines, and will be more and better every year. Futurists would do well to understand the question before giving out answers, especially extraordinary 'predictions.' There are computer scientists working with research physicians and brain scientists, each learning the others fields (a very healthy activity for progress into such a brave new world), and the most optimistic among them might predict a computer that you can actually have a real, spoken conversation with (on LIMITED subject matter) in another 20 years. As for a whole mind, anything coming anywhere NEAR to the overall human capacity for language, learning, problem solving, changing one's self to suit the environment (and the environment to suit one's self), and both analytical/logical thought as well as creative/lateral/syncretic thought, that will have to wait until we first understand what it is. Oh, of course. I forgot. What about the machine that improves and modifies itself when the lights are turned off? It'd first have to have a motive or some sort of imperative to do that, and more importantly, some model of what it was modifying itself INTO, and would have to understand that model at its essence, which is the whole problem and main barrier to the human endeavor towards this end. It's a catch-22: you need consciousness and human intelligence to build it, and to WANT to build it. So sorry Ray, it ain't gonna happen in your lifetime (and you should look elsewhere for the talents and ideas that will eventually get us there. They aren't to be found is CSE programs or Silicon Valley)."Transcendent Man" was a fun docu to watch. Kurweil is an articulate spokesman for his ideas, and a likable fellow. This is a thoughtful, well-made non-fiction film, and should spark a great deal of thought in those interested in the subject.