# The Age of Spiritual Machines by:: Ray Kurzweil Kurzweil, Ray: *The Age of Spiritual Machines*. 2000. ^bib ## Highlights #### Acceleration through order Technology is the progression of evolution by other means. Like the biological evolutionary process, the technological process is also accelerating. The reason for this is the increasing order on which it builds. %% added: [[2024-01-21]] processed: >Technology is the continuation of evolution by other means, and is itself an evolutionary process. So it, too, speeds up. A primary reason that evolution—of life-forms or of technology—speeds up is that it builds on its own increasing order. Innovations created by evolution encourage and enable faster evolution. In the case of the evolution of life-forms, the most notable example is DNA, which provides a recorded and protected transcription of life’s design from which to launch further experiments. %% #### Acceleration of progress in the 19th century Im 19. Jahrhundert gab es eine beeindruckende Bandbreite neuer Erfindungen, die den technologischen Fortschritt weiter befördert und beschleunigt haben, darunter: Fotografie, Telefonie (Bell Labs geht auf Telefonie zurück – der Ursprung von Unix), Bewegtbild, das Automobil. Und natürlich: die Glühbirne! 💡 %% >The progress of technology in the nineteenth century, for example, greatly exceeded that of earlier centuries, with the building of canals and great ships, the advent of paved roads, the spread of the railroad, the development of the telegraph, and the invention of photography, the bicycle, sewing machine, typewriter, telephone, phonograph, motion picture, automobile, and of course Thomas Edison’s light bulb. added: [[2024-04-09]] %% #### Technology is inevitable Dass [[Technologie]] entsteht ist eine logische, notwendige Konsequenz der Evolution, da Technologie einen klaren Überlebensvorteil bietet. Sobald also Leben auf einem Planeten aufkommt, ist die Entstehung von Technologie nur noch eine Frage der Zeit. %% >Once life takes hold on a planet, we can consider the emergence of technology as inevitable. The ability to expand the reach of one’s physical capabilities, not to mention mental facilities, through technology is clearly useful for survival. Technology has enabled our subspecies to dominate its ecological niche. %%