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The documentary is, to an extent, a film version of Ray Kurzweil's nonfiction text, *The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology* (2006).If you're not familiar with Ray Kurzweil's ideas, then I recommend familiarizing yourself with them. I want to go so far as to say he comes closest to articulating the general "mythology" of our time in regards to our relationship with technology.This was a wonderful documentary to watch before reading his book. It's also interesting because the ambivalent nature of our relationship to technology comes through in an intense way. Indeed, the extremes of "technology-as-savior" and "technology-as-doom" are evident in this documentary. For example, Ray Kurzweil believes that, eventually, machine intelligence and human intelligence will merge together, and that the next stage of human evolution involves our connection to technology: this connection will result in immortality. And yet, other scientists believe that machine intelligence will stay separate from us and, surpassing us in capabilities, intelligence, vision, will come to see us as a mere "insects." Thus, they'll destroy us with as much prejudice as we destroy a nest of wasps or some irritating rabbits.We have here the vision of either technology as Utopia or technology as Dsytopia: the U.S.S. Enterprise or Skynet.A lot of the documentary foregrounds Kurzweil's views, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's biased towards them. A lot of time is spent allowing his detractors to speak. Particularly, Hugo De Garis becomes the representative of the "dark side" of Kurzweil's technological vision. De Garis spends a lot of time talking about the "artilect war," a scenario he has imagined. The artiloect war, according to De Garis, will take place right before machines achieve consciousness. The war will be fought between people who think that intelligent machines should be built and people who believe intelligent machines are our doom and should not be built. We basically have, in De Garis's scenario, a fight between the two visions: those who recoil from technology as the death of humanity and those who embrace technology as the full manifestation of humanity (i.e. our destiny).There are other vexed issues in terms of our relationship to technology that come through in this documentary, namely, how we are coming to interface with it. One question is, where do the boundaries of the human end? After we have replaced our eyes, our lungs, our brains, our limbs with technological apparatuses, when do we stop being human and start being machines? This is a metaphysical question regarding the fundamental ontological nature of human being as an discrete experience.A lot of folks are reluctant to watch this documentary because they feel like Kurzweil is "just wrong." I think that's the wrong way of going about it. It doesn't really matter if he's right or wrong. What matters is that such visions are even being expostulated. That a man has written books claiming that technology will save us; that others have written books saying that technology will destroy us: these developments are culturally significant.They point toward our vexed relationship with technology, the degree to which we both love it. And hate it.

(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.

....but this whole film seems to be based on the foundation that every prediction Raymond Kurzweil has made so far has been correct, and that every invention he's created has been successful. I find this to be disingenuous at best. The handful of correct predictions presented as evidence merely serves to make me wonder : Did Kurzweil only make this small list of correct predictions, and shut up the rest of the time? Was his plethora of correct predictions so overwhelming that severe editing was required for brevity? I find this impossible to accept. If you want me to be impressed with your successes, Ray, you must admit your defeats. Kurzweil's claim that man's lifespan used to be 25 years is a blatant misuse of statistics. His claim of rapidly multiplying information ignores that much new information disproves old information. I'll stop now.

The subject of this documentary, Ray Kurzweil, is an accomplished inventor and futurist whose creations include a reading machine for the blind. The film focuses on Kurzweil's ideas about "The Singularity" an event in which humans will be able to incorporate machines into their bodies, including their brains, and augment their intelligence. Kurzweil sees a great deal of promise in this, including the potential for immortality.The film provides an interesting portrait of the man and his ideas, but it suffers from a relative lack of questioning of his optimism. Kurzweil has an at times deterministic vision of technological progress that fails to account for human foibles, and the double-edged sword of technology itself.For example,Kurzweil dismisses the issue of class totally as it applies to who can benefit from technological advancement. Kurzweil argues that the costs of new technology are only prohibitive during its early stages. He points to the fact that his reading machines for the blind have become more affordable. This ignores the fact that even in a wealthy society like the United States, many people cannot afford even basics like health care. The benefits of Kurzweil's techno-utopia are likely to fall on the wealthy alone.Furthermore, the law of accelerating returns that Kurzweil relies on seems deterministic, and ignores variables such as declining natural resources. At times, his faith in technological progress has an almost religious quality, particularly given the fact that he places so much hope on technology for achieving immortality.