The Age of Spiritual Machines
When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
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The Age of Spiritual Machines
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Narrated by:
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Alan Sklar
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By:
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Ray Kurzweil
About this listen
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence
Imagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs, where the line between humanity and technology fades, and where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil, the “restless genius” (The Wall Street Journal), “ultimate thinking machine” (Forbes), and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, it promises to be an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live.
More than just a list of predictions, Kurzweil’s prophetic blueprint for the future guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in:
• Computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain (with human-level capabilities not far behind)
• Relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers
• Information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways
Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.
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Critic reviews
“The Age of Spiritual Machines will blow your mind. Kurzweil lays out a scenario that might seem like science fiction if it weren’t coming from a proven entrepreneur.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking analysis of human and artificial intelligence and a unique look at a future in which the capabilities of the computer and the species that invented it grow ever closer.”—Bill Gates
“Tantalizing—sometimes terrifying. . . . a welcome challenge to beliefs we hold dear.”—Boston Globe
“Kurzweil’s broad outlook and fresh approach make his optimism hard to resist.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This is a book for computer enthusiasts, science fiction writers in search of cutting-edge themes and anyone who wonders where human technology is going next.”—The New York Times
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Story4 out of 5 stars 52
When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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Know This
- Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments
- By: John Brockman
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Dan John Miller
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 232
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 204
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Story4 out of 5 stars 201
Scientific developments radically alter our understanding of the world. Whether it's technology, climate change, health research, or the latest revelations of neuroscience, physics, or psychology, science has, as Edge editor John Brockman says, "become a big story, if not the big story". In that spirit this new addition to Edge.org's fascinating series asks a powerful and provocative question: What do you consider the most interesting and important recent scientific news?
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pete and Repeat and Re-repeat
- By Daniel L on 02-25-18
By: John Brockman
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On Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee
- Narrated by: Jeff Hawkins, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,323
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,099
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,098
Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Epiphany
- By James on 03-14-05
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
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Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Jeff Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 426
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 363
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Story4 out of 5 stars 357
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
- By LongerILiveLessIKnow on 11-14-13
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The Intelligent Web
- Search, Smart Algorithms, and Big Data
- By: Gautam Shroff
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
As we use the Web for social networking, shopping, and news, we leave a personal trail. These days, linger over a Web page selling lamps, and they will turn up at the advertising margins as you move around the Internet, reminding you, tempting you to make that purchase. Search engines such as Google can now look deep into the data on the Web to pull out instances of the words you are looking for. And there are pages that collect and assess information to give you a snapshot of changing political opinion.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book for learning about Deep learning
- By Darkpassenger on 04-16-15
By: Gautam Shroff
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The Ravenous Brain
- How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
- By: Daniel Bor
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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Why Information Grows
- The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
- By: César Hidalgo
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 386
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 326
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 322
What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book!
- By bpjammin on 01-07-17
By: César Hidalgo
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Autopilot
- The Art & Science of Doing Nothing
- By: Andrew Smart
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 3 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 570
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 498
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 499
Andrew Smart wants you to sit and do nothing much more often - and he has the science to explain why. At every turn we’re pushed to do more, faster, and more efficiently: That drumbeat resounds throughout our wage-slave society. Multitasking is not only a virtue, it’s a necessity. But Andrew Smart argues that slackers may have the last laugh. The latest neuroscience shows that the “culture of effectiveness” is not only ineffective, it can be harmful to your well-being.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not worth it.
- By B Lee on 04-30-14
By: Andrew Smart
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Whiplash
- How to Survive Our Faster Future
- By: Joi Ito, Jeff Howe
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 366
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 309
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 309
Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions - one in technology and the other in communications - joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Just general advice on how to survive
- By A. Yoshida on 09-01-17
By: Joi Ito, and others
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Breakpoint
- Why the Web Will Implode, Search Will Be Obsolete, and Everything Else You Need to Know About Technology Is in Your Brain
- By: Jeff Stibel
- Narrated by: Robert David Grant
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
We are living in a world in which cows send texts to farmers when they're in heat, where the most valuable real estate in New York City houses computers, not people, and some of humanity's greatest works are created by crowds, not individuals. We are in the midst of a networking revolution - set to transform the way we access the world's information and the way we connect with one another. Studying biological systems is perhaps the best way to understand such networks, and nature has a lesson for us if we care to listen: Bigger is rarely better in the long run.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Meh
- By Customer on 12-07-14
By: Jeff Stibel
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Radical Abundance
- How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
- By: K. Eric Drexler
- Narrated by: Tim Pabon
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4 out of 5 stars 109
K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology - the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Drexler Rehashes the Past
- By David on 10-19-13
By: K. Eric Drexler
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The Shallows
- What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
- By: Nicholas Carr
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,438
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,137
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,127
Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
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3 out of 5 stars
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It is not consistant, so it is frustrating.
- By Adam Shields on 08-03-12
By: Nicholas Carr
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T-Minus AI
- Humanity's Countdown to Artificial Intelligence and the New Pursuit of Global Power
- By: Michael Kanaan
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 174
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 146
In T-Minus AI: Humanity's Countdown to Artificial Intelligence and the New Pursuit of Global Power, author Michael Kanaan explains the realities of AI from a human-oriented perspective that's easy to comprehend. A recognized national expert and the U.S. Air Force's first Chairperson for Artificial Intelligence, Kanaan weaves a compelling new view on our history of innovation and technology to masterfully explain what each of us should know about modern computing, AI, and machine learning.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Trivial Book Regarding AI
- By AstroMan on 10-30-20
By: Michael Kanaan
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Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchell Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 309
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 266
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 265
In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
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1 out of 5 stars
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You won't learn anything you didn't know
- By Dennis E. Alwine on 12-26-20
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Undeniable
- How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
- By: Douglas Axe
- Narrated by: Neil Hellegers
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 311
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 273
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 272
Throughout his distinguished and unconventional career, engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Douglas Axe has been asking the questions that much of the scientific community would rather silence. Now, he presents his conclusions in this brave and pioneering book. Axe argues that the key to understanding our origin is the "design intuition" - the innate belief held by all humans that tasks we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Seductively Challenge what are consider facts
- By Rafael Vila on 10-08-16
By: Douglas Axe
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Freedom Evolves
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I knew I was going to like this book
- By Gary on 05-30-14
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4 out of 5 stars 109
We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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Transcend
- 9 Steps to Living Well Forever
- By: Ray Kurzweil, Terry Grossman MD
- Narrated by: Adam Lofbomm
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
In Transcend, famed futurist Ray Kurzweil and his coauthor, Terry Grossman, MD, present a cutting-edge, accessible program based on the vanguard in nutrition and science. They've distilled thousands of scientific studies to make the case that new developments in medicine and technology will allow us to radically extend our life expectancies and slow the aging process.
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1 out of 5 stars
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No supplemental materials means useless
- By Ashish on 08-03-21
By: Ray Kurzweil, and others
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How to Create a Mind
- The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
- By: Ray Kurzweil
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain function