Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Intellectual Property.
If the primary value of products and services resides in their information, then the protection of 
information rights will be critical to supporting the business models that provide the capital to fund the creation of 
valuable information. The skirmishes today in the entertainment industry regarding illegal downloading of music and 
movies are a harbinger of what will be a profound struggle, once essentially everything of value is composed of 
information. Clearly, existing or new business models that allow for the creation of valuable intellectual property (IP) 
need to be protected, otherwise the supply of IP will itself be threatened. However, the pressure from the ease of 
copying information is a reality that is not going away, so industries will suffer if they do not keep their business 
models in line with public expectations. 
In music, for example, rather than provide leadership with new paradigms, the recording industry stuck rigidly 
(until just recently) with the idea of an expensive record album, a business model that has remained unchanged from 
the time my father was a young, struggling musician in the 1940s. The public will avoid wide-scale pirating of 
information services only if commercial prices are kept at what are perceived to be reasonable levels. The mobile-
phone sector is a prime example of an industry that has not invited rampant piracy. The cost of cell-phone calls has 
fallen rapidly with improving technology. If the mobile-phone industry had kept calling rates at the level where they 
were when I was a child (a time when people dropped whatever they were doing at the rare times that someone called 
long distance), we would be seeing comparable pirating of cell-phone calls, which is technically no more difficult than 
pirating music. But cheating on cell-phone calls is widely regarded as criminal behavior, largely because of the general 
perception that cell-phone charges are appropriate. 
IP business models invariably exist on the edge of change. Movies have been difficult to download because of 
their large file size, but that is rapidly becoming less of an issue. The movie industry needs to lead the charge toward 
new standards, such as high-definition movies on demand. Musicians typically make most of their money with live 
performances, but that model will also come under attack early in the next decade, when we will have full-immersion 
virtual reality. Each industry will need to continually reinvent its business models, which will require as much 
creativity as the creation of the IP itself. 
The first industrial revolution extended the reach of our bodies, and the second is extending the reach of our 
minds. As I mentioned, employment in factories and farms has gone from 60 percent to 6 percent in the United States 
in the past century. Over the next couple of decades, virtually all routine physical and mental work will be automated. 
Computation and communication will not involve discrete products such as handheld devices but will be a seamless 
web of intelligent resources that are all around us. Already most contemporary work is involved in the creation and 

---

promotion of IP in one form or another, as well as direct personal services from one person to another (health, fitness, 
education, and so on). These trends will continue with the creation of IP—including all of our artistic, social, and 
scientific creativity—and will be greatly enhanced by the expansion of our intellect through the merger with 
nonbiological intelligence. Personal services will largely move to virtual-reality environments, especially when virtual 
reality begins to encompass all of the senses.