Will My PC Be Smarter Than I Am?
Yes, says author and inventor Ray Kurweil in a special article for TIME. In a decade or so we will be able to copy the design of our brains and download it into a computer, where the speed of the machine will make it appear smarter than us. But that superiority won't last for long: We will eventually install tiny chips into our brain, making the terms "human" and "computer" almost interchangeable.
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Technology
Bill Gates: Will Frankenfood Feed the World?
Will We Still Drive Our Cars (Or Will Our Cars Drive Us)?
Bruce Sterling: Will Cybercriminals Run the World?
Will Cybersex Be Better Than Real Sex?
Will We Still Turn Pages?

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  • quiz
    The possibility of nanotechnology was first advanced by _____ in __, when he said: "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom."

    a) Richard Feynman, 1959
    b) John Von Neumann, 1966
    c) Charles H. Bennet and Rolf Landauer, 1985
    d) Eric Drexler, 1986
    poll
    In the future, will humans have neural implants similar to computer chips in their brains?
    Yes
    No



    web resources
    Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
    A powerful article by Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, examining the ethical concerns of 21st-century technologies — robotics, genetic engineering and nanotech

    Brain Implants
    A pseudohistorical account of brain implants from circa 2500

    Nanotechnology
    A site that begins with a brief introduction to the core concepts of molecular nanotechnology