Ray Kurzweil should probably have chosen a different, more dramatic first sentence for his book. Somehow “At the age of five, I had the idea I would become an inventor” doesn’t do justice to the scope and power of his basic premise. Nor does it prepare the reader for the almost religious fervor that will permeate great lengths of his work.

Maybe something in the lines of “A spectre is haunting the world, the spectre of Artificial Intelligence” would have been more appropriate. It’s the kind of drumbeat a book like The Singularity is Near, begs for. Its doubtful, however, if mr Kurzweil would ever use the ominous terms of the Communist Manifesto.

Read the full Singularity is Near review at http://cybookreview.com/bookreview.html