technological singularity

The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism

by Adrian Wooldridge  · 7 Apr 2026  · 342pp  · 129,097 words

of a ‘great moderation’ as economic crises disappeared and markets became ever more efficient. Technologists predicted that the world was on the verge of a technological singularity when economic growth becomes supersonic.20 Left-liberals argued that human beings were an infinite collection of possibilities who could shift their gender in whatever

The Transhumanist Reader

by Max More and Natasha Vita-More  · 4 Mar 2013  · 798pp  · 240,182 words

: Cognitive Liberty Design Thinking and Cognitive Liberty Caveats on Concept: Fictions of Freedom Freedom in Spite of All Else Part VIII Future Trajectories: Singularity 35 Technological Singularity I. What is the Singularity? II. Can the Singularity Be Avoided? III. Other Paths to the Singularity IV. Strong Superhumanity and the Best We Can

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Ask For 36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity Introduction Definitions of Technological Singularity Models Accelerating Change Discussion 37 A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept Comment by David Brin: Singularities Comment by Damien Broderick Comment by

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). Vernor Vinge, PhD, is former Professor of Mathematics, University of California San Diego. He authored A Fire Upon the Deep (Tor, 1993, 2011); “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” (Whole Earth Review, 1993); and True Names … and Other Dangers (Baen Book, 1987). Natasha Vita-More, PhD

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the philosophy from the ancients through to the twentieth-century precursors, explains transhumanism’s relationship to humanism and to other concepts including extropy and the technological singularity, and then outlines contemporary variations. He concludes by identifying several misconceptions about transhumanism. Although the philosophical, scientific, technological, and even political aspects of transhumanism have

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is both possible and desirable. Beyond that, consensus immediately dissolves, with differences over the expected rate, shape, and risks of progress. Those who expect a technological singularity anticipate a drastic acceleration in the rate of change, either as a one-time jump caused by the advent of super-intelligence, or as a

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-faq/. Verdoux, Philippe (2009) “Transhumanism, Progress and the Future.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 20/2 (December), pp. 49–69. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Whole Earth Review (Winter). Vita-More, Natasha (1983) “Transhuman Manifesto.” http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanmanifesto.htm. Vita-More, Natasha (1992) “Transhumanist Arts Statement.” Revised 2002

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). The dramatic potential consequences of this sort of intelligence explosion led science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, in the early 1990s, to speak of a coming “technological Singularity” (Vinge 1993). Ray Kurzweil has done a huge amount to bring the Singularity meme to the world’s attention, via his 2005 book The Singularity

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, Anders and Bostrom, Nick (2008) Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap. Technical Report #2008-3. Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” Whole Earth Review (Winter). Walter, Henrik (2001) The Neurophilosophy of Free Will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wegner

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part to compounding advances in computational technologies, will overtake biological humans in general intelligence. See, for instance, The Singularity is Near (Kurzweil 2005); see also “Technological Singularity?” (Vinge 1993), reprinted in Whole Earth (Spring 2003), an issue featuring several articles on the topic. 9 Hughes 2004. 10 See for instance, the President

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. Montemagno, eds., The Coevolution of Human Potential and Converging Technologies. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1013, pp. 221–228. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “Technological Singularity?” Reprinted in Whole Earth (Spring 2003). Part VIII Future Trajectories Singularity How does the concept of the singularity relate to that of transhumanism? In science

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a mathematical point where an object is not defined, or to a cosmological event where measure of the gravitational field becomes infinite. In theory, the technological singularity is a conjecture about the emergence of super-intelligent minds. Transhumanism is a worldview that seeks to understand the unknown, anticipate risks, and ­create an

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for humanity, including the nonbiological superintelligences we may become or create. However, too often, observers conflate the two concepts, assuming that all transhumanists anticipate a technological singularity. The considerable overlap of interests and expectations represented by both views feeds that confusion. After all, both transhumanists and proponents of the

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its trajectory into the future. To clearly separate specific singularitarian expectations from the philosophy of transhumanism requires first defining the former. The original meaning of “technological singularity”, as coined by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay (the first in this section) is the Event Horizon view. This view links to Alan Turing

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, the concept of the “singularity” is not itself singular. In his essay, Anders Sandberg delves in great detail into a range of differing models of technological singularity. A less complex map of this territory captures the three primary models on which most people seem to agree. These are the Event Horizon, Accelerating

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Change, and Intelligence Explosion. The Accelerating Change conception of the technological singularity has become strongly associated with inventor and visionary Ray Kurzweil. According to this view, technological change is a positive feedback loop and so is exponential

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no shortage of those who are much less favorable to the singularity and see more stagnation than acceleration. It is entirely possible to expect a technological singularity of one of these types and yet not to be a transhumanist. The advent of superhuman intelligence might involve augmenting human intelligence to superhuman levels

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any singular event. Part VIII clarifies and critically examines thinking about the singularity, starting with Vernor Vinge’s seminal essay. Anders Sandberg analyzes models of technological singularity in detail, looking for their commonalities and differences. The final essay in Part VIII collects the 1998 deliberations of a number of transhumanist thinkers to

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critically discuss the singularity, as ­initially defined by Vinge, in its technological and economic aspects. 35 Technological Singularity Vernor Vinge I. What is the Singularity? The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. We are on the edge

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intelligence as a sufficient condition to break his projections. The preceding paragraph misses what I think is the strongest argument against the possibility of the technological Singularity: even if we can make computers that have the raw hardware power, we may not be able to organize the parts to behave in a

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watch are our progress with large software projects and our progress in applying biological paradigms to massively networked and massively parallel systems. But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the “threat” and be in deadly fear of it, progress

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make things happen in ways that are less inimical than others. Whether foresight and good planning can make any difference may depend on whether the technological Singularity comes as a “hard takeoff” or a “soft takeoff.” A hard takeoff is one in which the transition to superhuman control takes just a few

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(1981) “True Names.” In Binary Star 5. New York: Dell. Vinge, Vernor (1983) “First Word.” Omni 10 (January). Earlier essay on “the Singularity.” “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era,” by Vernor Vinge, was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Center and the

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. Copyright © Vernor Vinge 1993. http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html 36 An Overview of Models of Technological Singularity Anders Sandberg This essay reviews different definitions and models of technological singularity. The models range from conceptual sketches to detailed endogenous growth models, as well as attempts to fit empirical data to

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be the case for AI or brain emulation) extremely rapid growth would also become likely. Introduction The set of concepts today commonly referred to as “technological singularity” has a long ­history in the computer science community, with early examples such as: One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and

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theme of these two examples is accelerated technological change leading to a rapid transition to a state where the current human condition would be challenged. Technological singularity is of increasing interest among futurists both as a predicted possibility in the mid-term future and as subject for methodological debate. The concept is

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critics argue that the term should be avoided altogether (Tyler 2009). At the very least the term “singularity” has led to many unfortunate assumptions that technological singularity involves some form of mathematical singularity and can hence be ignored as unphysical. This essay is attempting a simple taxonomy of models of

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technological singularity, hopefully helping to disambiguate the different meanings of the word. It also aims at a brief review of ­formal quantitative models of singularity-like phenomena,

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in the hope of promoting a more stringent discussion of these possibilities. Definitions of Technological Singularity A brief list of meanings of the term “technological singularity” found in the literature and some of their proponents: A. [Accelerating change] Exponential or superexponential technological growth (with linked economic growth

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claims are actually made and for considering the implications of such a process, if it takes place. As noted in Heylighen 1997, models for the technological singularity, whether qualitative or quantitative, should not be taken too literally. Models include what are considered to be the important and relevant features of a system

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humans, future transitions might involve parts or the whole of the human species becoming a super-organism (Turchin and Joslyn 1989). As a model for technological singularity the metasystem transition is largely qualitative rather than quantitative. Without a detailed model of the subsystem dynamics the transition is undefined. However, the biological and

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seems applicable to economic systems with increasing returns. Hanson (type A) Robin Hanson has examined the economics of technological singularity using standard economic tools. He analyzed a simple model of investment in the context of technological singularity (Hanson 1998a). He found that the curve of supply of capital has two distinct parts, producing two

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occur somewhere “near the year 2150”). However, this mode requires fine-tuning the savings rate and the fraction of investment return. In most senses of technological singularity the amount of available “mental capital” (humans or machines able to do skilled work) increases significantly. Hanson models this in an exogenous growth model that

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cost and availability of the hardware necessary to run the emulations, producing a high growth rate but diminishing individual wages. Empirical estimates Empirical estimates of technological singularity consist of attempts to collate historical (sometimes even paleontological and cosmological) data to estimate whether the “rate of change” is increasing exponentially or superexponentially. This

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and to last 20–25 years, he argued that there has been a plateau in transition lengths for the last century that would preclude a technological singularity (Aunger 2007).8 Discussion Generically, mathematical models that exhibit growth tend to exhibit at least exponential growth since this is the signature of linear self

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many not too implausible endogenous growth models can produce radical growth appears to support some forms of the singularity concept. A common criticism is that technological singularity assumes technological determinism. This appears untrue: several if not all of the singularity concepts in the introduction could apply even if technology just exhibited trends

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contingency and ­statistical spread are merely part of the normal modeling process, and further models may if needed include such subtle details. Future models of technological singularity may very well include the multiform microscale or cultural details that shape large-scale progress, but ­understanding the major structure of the phenomenon needs to

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Singularity.” IEEE Spectrum (June), pp. 37–42. Hawkins, Gerald S. (2002) Mindsteps to the Cosmos. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific. Heylighen, Francis (1997) “The Socio-Technological Singularity.” http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SINGULAR.html. Heylighen, Francis (2007) “Accelerating Socio-Technological Evolution: From Ephemeralization and Stigmergy to the Global Brain.” In George Modelski

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, pp. 377–404. Modis, Theodore (2006) “Discussion.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 73/2, pp. 104–112. Moravec, Hans (1999) “Simple Equations for Vinge’s Technological Singularity.” http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/robot.papers/1999/singularity.html Moravec, Hans (2003) “Simpler Equations for Vinge’s

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, Stanislaw (1968) “Tribute to John von Neumann.” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64(3–2) (May), pp. 1–49. Vinge, Vernor (1993) The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era. NASA CP-10129. Vinge, Vernor (2008) “Signs of the Singularity.” IEEE Spectrum (June). von Foerster, Heinz, Mora

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intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. (Vinge 1993) Around 2050, or maybe as early as 2020, is when Dr. Vernor Vinge’s technological Singularity is expected to erupt, in the considered opinion of a number of scientists. Call such an event “the Spike,” because technology’s exponential curve resembles

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(1994) The Physics of Immortality. New York: Doubleday. Vinge, Vernor (1992) A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: Tor Books. Vinge, Vernor (1993) “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” NASA VISION-21 Symposium. Originally published in Extropy Online (2000). Copyright © Max More. Part IX The World

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-organization Sententia, Wrye Shapiro, Michael Silver, Lee simulation singularity Stelarc Sterling, Bruce Stock, Gregory substrate independent minds superhuman superintelligence superlongevity symbiogenesis synthetic biology techno-organic Technological Singularity, see singularity technoprogressive Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre telematic therapeutic, see therapy therapy Tipler, Frank tradeoffs transcend transcendence transcendent transgender transgenderism, see transgender transhuman Transhuman Manifesto

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology

by Ray Kurzweil  · 14 Jul 2005  · 761pp  · 231,902 words

throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. —VERNOR VINGE, "THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY," 1993 Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the

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machines' designing their next generation without human intervention. Vernor Vinge, a mathematician and computer scientist at San Diego State University, wrote about a rapidly approaching "technological singularity" in an article for Omni magazine in 1983 and in a science-fiction novel, Marooned in Realtime, in 1986.19 My 1989 book, The Age

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Press, 1989). 21. Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). 22. Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era," VISION-21 Symposium, sponsored by the NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 1993

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

by James Barrat  · 30 Sep 2013  · 294pp  · 81,292 words

way, so there’d be no surprises. Let’s go back to one common definition of the Singularity for a moment, what’s called the “technological Singularity.” It refers to the time in history when we humans share the planet with smarter-than-human intelligence. Ray Kurzweil proposes that we’ll merge

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it’s not just the future of the earth that’s on the block. As Vassar told me, “MIRI’s mission is to cause the technological singularity to happen in the best possible way, to bring about the best possible future for the universe.” What would a good outcome for the universe

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something important in common now. We both believed the intelligence explosion wouldn’t end well. Chapter Eight The Point of No Return But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the “threat” and be in deadly fear of it, progress

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in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will. —Vernor Vinge, The Coming Technological Singularity, 1993 This quotation sounds like a fleshed-out version of I. J. Good’s biographical aside, doesn’t it? Like Good, two-time Hugo Award

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first person to formally use the word “singularity” when describing the technological future—he did it in a 1993 address to NASA, entitled “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam reported that he and polymath John von Neumann had used “singularity” in a conversation about technological change thirty-five years earlier, in

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wall across the future. AI researcher Ben Goertzel told me, “Vernor Vinge saw its inherent unknowability very clearly when he posited the notion of the technological singularity. It’s because of that that he doesn’t go around giving speeches about it because he doesn’t know what to say. What’s

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a few decades, we’ll be getting transformations that are, by analogy, of biologically large significance.” Two important ideas are packed into this. First, the technological singularity will bring about a change in intelligence itself, the solely human superpower that creates technology to begin with. That’s why it’s different from

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“Computer Pioneer Award” of the IEEE Computer Society, Biography and Acceptance Speech (1998), 8. 8: THE POINT OF NO RETURN But if the technological Singularity: Vinge, Vernor, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” 1993, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html. This quotation sounds a lot: Could Good have read Vinge’s essay

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we face every time: Vinge, Vernor, True Names and Other Dangers (Wake Forest: Baen Books, 1987), 47. Through the sixties and seventies: Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity.” Good has captured the essence of the runaway: Ibid. Technology thinkers including: Kelly, Kevin, “Q&A: Hacker Historian George Dyson Sits Down With Wired’s

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/03/hawking-warns-of-ai-world-takeover-2094424/ (accessed September 5, 2011). Within thirty years, we will have the technological means: Vinge, Vernor, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” 2003, http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html (accessed September 5, 2011). If the consequences of an action: Kurzweil, Ray, The Singularity

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Churchill, Winston Church-Turing hypothesis Clarke, Arthur C. climate change cloud computing cognitive architectures OpenCog cognitive bias Cognitive Computing Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) Colossus “Coming Technological Singularity, The” (Vinge) computational neuroscience computers, computing cloud detrimental effects from exponential growth in power of see also programming; software computer science consciousness creativity cybercrime Cyc

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Systems self-improvement self-preservation September 11 attacks serial processing SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Shostak, Seth Silicon Valley Singularitarians Singularity definitions of Kurzweil and technological Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil) Singularity Summit Singularity University Sir Groovy Siri 60 Minutes Skilling, Jeffrey Smart Action smart phones see also iPhone software complexity of

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence

by George Zarkadakis  · 7 Mar 2016  · 405pp  · 117,219 words

’s architecture were rediscovered nearly a century later. And so was the separation between hardware and software. In this sense, the Analytical Engine was a technological singularity that happened in a world not ready yet to make something useful of it. Similarly to Hellenistic innovations such as the Hero’s Steam Engine

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Peace War (1984) and in Marooned in Realtime (1986), Vinge was the first to explore a fictitious time in the future that he called ‘the technological singularity’. This is when the human race has transcended into a different form of existence with the assistance of exponentially improving sentient technology. He expressed these

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), ‘Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence – but are we taking AI seriously enough?’, in: Independent, 1 May 2014. 23Vinge, V. (1993), ‘The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era’, presented at: the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

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, 30–31 March, 1993. 24Vinge, V. (1993), ‘The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era’, presented at: the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

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in an ‘intelligent’ way through constant adaptation and self-regulation, a concept explored by James Lovelock in his Gaia hypothesis. 28Vinge, V. (1993), ‘The coming technological singularity: how to survive in the post-human era’, presented at: the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein  · 23 Apr 2018  · 282pp  · 81,873 words

for cofounding Penthouse with her husband, Bob Guccione. In this esteemed journal, amid articles on “sea monkeys, apemen and living dinosaurs,” Vinge forecast a looming “technological singularity” in which computer intelligence would exceed the comprehension of its human creators. The remarkable exponential growth curve of technological advancement was not about to level

Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems

by Didier Sornette  · 18 Nov 2002  · 442pp  · 39,064 words

this is true (or for that matter, if the Penrose or Searle critique is valid), we might never see the singularity [438]. But if the technological singularity can happen, it will. Vinge argues that we cannot prevent the singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of humans’ natural competitiveness and the

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Eleventh Annual Economic Policy Conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Courtenay C. Stone, editor (Kluwer, Boston). 438. Vinge, V. (1993). The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era, available at http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/ sing.html, presented at the VISION-21 Symposium

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

the normal laws of physics break down). But it is important to remember that I use the term as a metaphor. My prediction of the technological Singularity does not suggest that rates of change will actually become infinite, as exponential growth does not imply infinity, nor does a physical singularity. A black

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism

by Calum Chace  · 17 Jul 2016  · 477pp  · 75,408 words

Brain Lab, Xiamen University, China “The jobs of the future don’t exist today and the jobs of today will not exist in the future. Technological Singularity will change everything, but its first manifestation will come in the domain of economics, most likely in the shape of technological unemployment. Calum Chace’s

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of change will be so great that the future will become mysterious in a new way. So much so that people talk about a coming technological singularity. The term “singularity” is borrowed from maths and physics, where it means a point at which a variable becomes infinite. The usual example is the

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harder to predict than usual. In recent years, the term has been applied to the impact of technology on human affairs.[iv] Superintelligence and the technological singularity The technological singularity is most commonly defined as what happens when the first artificial general intelligence (AGI) is created – a machine which can perform any intellectual task

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“singularity” no longer seems so awkward. And it seems reasonable to apply it to another event which is likely to take place well before the technological singularity. I call this event “the economic singularity”. There is a lot of talk in the media at the moment about technological unemployment – the process of

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momentous one, as the arrival of superintelligence will not be far beyond it. The likelihood of an intelligence explosion is commonly referred to as the technological singularity. This could be an astonishingly positive development for humankind, or a disastrously negative one. I wrote about this extensively in my previous book, “Surviving AI

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intelligence. 7.2 – The two singularities In my previous book, “Surviving AI”, I wrote at length about the challenge and the opportunity presented by the technological singularity, the moment when (and if) we create an artificial general intelligence which continues to improve its cognitive performance and becomes a superintelligence. Ensuring that we

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sure we don’t blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, or unleash a pathogen which kills everyone. If we secure the good outcome to the technological singularity, the future of humanity is glorious almost beyond imagination. As DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis likes to say, humanity’s plan for the future should

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again is something we are good at. On the other hand, if it is coming at all, the economic singularity is coming sooner than the technological singularity. No-one knows how long it will take to build an artificial general intelligence, but it looks tremendously hard. It is probably only a matter

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sense that it will be obvious and undeniable that it is going to happen. Asset prices may collapse at that point. Relatively speaking, then, the technological singularity is more important but less urgent, while the economic singularity is less important but more urgent. 7.3 – What is to be done? Relinquishment won

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most important. Whether they like it or not, they have the task of navigating us through the economic singularity of mass unemployment, and then the technological singularity of super-intelligence. If they succeed, humanity’s future is almost incredibly good. If not, it could be bleak. It will fall largely to them

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Kurzweil, who believes that computers will overtake humans in general intelligence in 1929, and a singularity will arrive in 2045. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity [v] The event horizon of a black hole is the point beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer, or in other words, the point

The Road to Conscious Machines

by Michael Wooldridge  · 2 Nov 2018  · 346pp  · 97,890 words

excellent coverage of the various other approaches to machine learning. For a good discussion on the Singularity, I recommend Murray Shanahan’s very readable The Technological Singularity (MIT Press, Essential Knowledge Series, 2015); for ethical AI, see Virginia Dignum’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence (Springer, 2019); for technology and employment, see Carl Benedikt

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WE IMAGINE THINGS MIGHT GO WRONG 1. http://tinyurl.com/ybsrkr4a. 2. R. Kurzweil. The Singularity is Near. Penguin, 2005. 3. V. Vinge. ‘The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era’. NASA Lewis Research Center, Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, pp. 11

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Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence

by Richard Yonck  · 7 Mar 2017  · 360pp  · 100,991 words

Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI

by John Brockman  · 19 Feb 2019  · 339pp  · 94,769 words

Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence

by Jacob Turner  · 29 Oct 2018  · 688pp  · 147,571 words

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

by Amy Webb  · 5 Mar 2019  · 340pp  · 97,723 words

Across Realtime

by Vernor Vinge  · 1 Jan 1986  · 665pp  · 207,115 words

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

by Vernor Vinge  · 30 Sep 2001  · 659pp  · 203,574 words

The Knowledge Illusion

by Steven Sloman  · 10 Feb 2017  · 313pp  · 91,098 words

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe  · 6 Dec 2016  · 254pp  · 76,064 words

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy

by Pistono, Federico  · 14 Oct 2012  · 245pp  · 64,288 words

The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson  · 6 Oct 2014  · 720pp  · 197,129 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

The Dark Net

by Jamie Bartlett  · 20 Aug 2014  · 267pp  · 82,580 words

Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

by Garry Kasparov  · 1 May 2017  · 331pp  · 104,366 words

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

by Eliezer Yudkowsky  · 11 Mar 2015  · 1,737pp  · 491,616 words

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

by Anil Seth  · 29 Aug 2021  · 418pp  · 102,597 words

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

by Ray Kurzweil  · 31 Dec 1998  · 696pp  · 143,736 words

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley  · 17 May 2010  · 462pp  · 150,129 words

Pandora's Brain

by Calum Chace  · 4 Feb 2014  · 345pp  · 104,404 words

Warnings

by Richard A. Clarke  · 10 Apr 2017  · 428pp  · 121,717 words

The Nature of Technology

by W. Brian Arthur  · 6 Aug 2009  · 297pp  · 77,362 words

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition

by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek  · 17 Aug 2015  · 257pp  · 64,285 words

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard

by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel  · 3 Oct 2016  · 504pp  · 126,835 words

Innovation and Its Enemies

by Calestous Juma  · 20 Mar 2017

Engineering Infinity

by Jonathan Strahan  · 28 Dec 2010  · 360pp  · 101,636 words

Avogadro Corp

by William Hertling  · 9 Apr 2014  · 247pp  · 71,698 words

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto

by Benjamin Wallace  · 18 Mar 2025  · 431pp  · 116,274 words

Iron Sunrise

by Stross, Charles  · 28 Oct 2004  · 462pp  · 142,240 words

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together

by Bruce Schneier  · 14 Feb 2012  · 503pp  · 131,064 words

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks

by Joshua Cooper Ramo  · 16 May 2016  · 326pp  · 103,170 words

The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity

by Byron Reese  · 23 Apr 2018  · 294pp  · 96,661 words

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

by Martin J. Rees  · 14 Oct 2018  · 193pp  · 51,445 words

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

by David Sax  · 15 Jan 2022  · 282pp  · 93,783 words

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

by Melanie Swan  · 22 Jan 2014  · 271pp  · 52,814 words

The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth

by Michael Spitzer  · 31 Mar 2021  · 632pp  · 163,143 words

The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann

by Ananyo Bhattacharya  · 6 Oct 2021  · 476pp  · 121,460 words

I Hate the Internet: A Novel

by Jarett Kobek  · 3 Nov 2016  · 302pp  · 74,350 words

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

by Joanna Walsh  · 22 Sep 2025  · 255pp  · 80,203 words

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)

by Jamie Bartlett  · 4 Apr 2018  · 170pp  · 49,193 words

The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life

by Mark Synnott  · 5 Mar 2019  · 389pp  · 131,688 words

Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing

by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman  · 20 Nov 2012  · 307pp  · 92,165 words

Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook for Business Leaders

by Mariya Yao, Adelyn Zhou and Marlene Jia  · 1 Jun 2018  · 161pp  · 39,526 words

Machine Translation

by Thierry Poibeau  · 14 Sep 2017  · 174pp  · 56,405 words

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  · 14 Jul 2011  · 369pp  · 80,355 words

The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars

by Jo Marchant  · 15 Jan 2020  · 544pp  · 134,483 words

The Children of the Sky

by Vernor Vinge  · 11 Oct 2011  · 746pp  · 221,583 words

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together

by Thomas W. Malone  · 14 May 2018  · 344pp  · 104,077 words

Collaborative Society

by Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska  · 18 Feb 2020  · 187pp  · 50,083 words

Rainbows End

by Vernor Vinge  · 1 May 2006