Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ

“Nimble and entertaining . . . A fascinating historical review of our longtime obsession with machines.”
–David Takami, Seattle Times

In Rapture for the Geeks, Richard Dooling looks at what some of the greatest minds have to say about our roles in a future in which technology rapidly leaves us in the dust. Is the era of Singularity, when machines outthink humans, almost upon us? Will we be enslaved by our supercomputer overlords, as many sci-fi writers have wondered? Or will humans live lives of leisure with computers doing all the heavy lifting?

With antic wit, fearless prescience, and common sense, Dooling provocatively examines nothing less than what it means to be human in what he playfully calls the age of B.S. (before Singularity)–and what life will be like when we are no longer alone with Mother Nature at Darwin’s card table.

“One doesn’t expect a nonfiction book to be fascinating, chilling, thoughtful, and funny in equal measure. This one is.”–Kurt Andersen

“Dooling really is onto something here.”–Ars Technica

“Nimble and entertaining . . . A fascinating historical review of our longtime obsession with machines.”
–David Takami, Seattle Times

In Rapture for the Geeks, Richard Dooling looks at what some of the greatest minds have to say about our roles in a future in which technology rapidly leaves us in the dust. Is the era of Singularity, when machines outthink humans, almost upon us? Will we be enslaved by our supercomputer overlords, as many sci-fi writers have wondered? Or will humans live lives of leisure with computers doing all the heavy lifting?

With antic wit, fearless prescience, and common sense, Dooling provocatively examines nothing less than what it means to be human in what he playfully calls the age of B.S. (before Singularity)–and what life will be like when we are no longer alone with Mother Nature at Darwin’s card table.

“One doesn’t expect a nonfiction book to be fascinating, chilling, thoughtful, and funny in equal measure. This one is.”–Kurt Andersen

“Dooling really is onto something here.”–Ars Technica

Publishers Weekly

Novelist and screenwriter Dooling (White Man's Grave) contemplates the "Era of Singularity," the coming day when computers will be able to outthink humans, in this uneven take on the future of machine intelligence. Dooling is at his best when he profiles technology's most captivating futurists: Ray Kurzweil, inventor of scanning and text-to-speech technologies, beguiles with his vision of human minds embedded in silicon chips; physicist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge portrays a bleaker future where humanity serves its hyperintelligent computer overlords. Dooling veers back and forth between celebrating the speed with which technology is evolving and ruing its hidden perils ("our fatal flaw... is Promethean fire-stealing, the instinct to always and everywhere overreach"), along the way touching upon the computer research, various philosophies of mind and intelligence, and the historical tensions between man and machine. While an engaging writer, Dooling tends to indulge in sarcasm and snarky humor, which trivializes the deeper import of his message: that whether machines ever become self-aware, "living" minds, we are losing something of what makes us human when we lose control of our own creations and their meaning. (Oct.)

RICHARD DOOLING is a novelist, screenwriter, and lawyer, a visiting professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. He is the author of Critical Care, Brainstorm, Bet Your Life, and the novel White Man’s Grave, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife, children, and computers.