This is an enjoyable book, completely unshackled from the practicalities of everyday life. Moravec, who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, speculates on the grandest scale possible for a human - for example, on how life might become effectively immortal during the last scant moments of the universe. Moravec's main area of expertise is artificial intelligence, and he launches with great relish into an explanation of the future of the field.

I would say that many of his conclusions are essentially sound; however, I think he is mistaken about the time it will take to create machines with flexible, wide-ranging intelligence. He is often guilty of equating brute computational power with intelligence; such power is, however, not a sufficient condition for conscious, flexible intelligence - whereas throwing 11 Maurice Greens on a soccer pitch is not a recipe for success, 11 portly Maradonas are likely to do rather well. What is needed, in other words, is algorithmic (computational) elegance. Nonetheless, and despite this book's shortcomings, I can recommend it to anyone interested in AI and the far future.

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