Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Decentralization.
The next several decades will see a major trend toward decentralization. Today we have highly 
centralized and vulnerable energy plants and use ships and fuel lines to transport energy. The advent of 
nanoengineered fuel cells and solar power will enable energy resources to be massively distributed and integrated into 
our infrastructure. MNT manufacturing will be highly distributed using inexpensive nanofabrication minifactories. The 
ability to do nearly anything with anyone from anywhere in any virtual-reality environment will make obsolete the 
centralized technologies of office buildings and cities. 
With version 3.0 bodies able to morph into different forms at will and our largely nonbiological brains no longer 
constrained to the limited architecture that biology has bestowed on us, the question of what is human will undergo 
intensive examination. Each transformation described here does not represent a sudden leap but rather a sequence of 
many small steps. Although the speed with which these steps are being taken is hastening, mainstream acceptance 
generally follows rapidly. Consider new reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, which were 
controversial at first but quickly became widely used and accepted. On the other hand, change will always produce 
fundamentalist and Luddite counteractions, which will intensify as the pace of change increases. But despite apparent 
controversy, the overwhelming benefits to human health, wealth, expression, creativity, and knowledge quickly 
become apparent. 
. . . on Play 
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that people don't have to experience it. 
—M
AX 
F
RISCH
,
H
OMO 
F
ABER
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. 
—H
ELEN 
K
ELLER
Play is just another version of work and has an integral role in the human creation of knowledge in all of its forms. A 
child playing with dolls and blocks is acquiring knowledge essentially by creating it through his or her own 
experience. People playing with dance moves are engaged in a collaborative creative process (consider the kids on 
street comers in the nation's poorest neighborhoods who created break dancing, which launched the hip-hop 
movement). Einstein put aside his work for the Swiss patent office and engaged in playful mind experiments, resulting 
in the creation of his enduring theories of special and general relativity. If war is the father of invention, then play is its 
mother. 
Already there is no clear distinction between increasingly sophisticated video games and educational software. 
The Sims 2
, a game released in September 2004, uses AI-based characters that have their own motivations and 
intentions. With no prepared scripts the characters behave in unpredictable ways, with the story line emerging out of 
their interactions. Although considered a game, it offers players insights into developing social awareness. Similarly 
games that simulate sports with increasingly realistic play impart skills and understanding. 
By the 2020s, full-immersion virtual reality will be a vast playground of compelling environments and 
experiences. Initially VR will have certain benefits in terms of enabling communications with others in engaging ways 
over long distances and featuring a great variety of environments from which to choose. Although the environments 

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will not be completely convincing at first, by the late 2020s they will be indistinguishable from real reality and will 
involve all of the senses, as well as neurological correlations of our emotions. As we enter the 2030s there won't be 
clear distinctions between human and machine, between real and virtual reality, or between work and play.