First, I have to admit that being a “futurist” is a tough gig – at the same time, if you make enough predictions, you can always find some you got right. In the book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil is a lot of that – speculation.

I am on board for most of what he is saying in the book but like most pop-sci reads, he takes some huge leaps in his resulting conclusions. His own Law if Accelerating Returns (LOAR) is used to justify a couple of those leaps. Calling something a law doesn’t make it one. Well, according to my Law of Exaggerated Leaps (LOEP) it doesn’t.

You can write me off as too dumb to understand this man that his PR has dubbed “Today’s most influential futurist.” Or perhaps, you can join me and saying that much of this book is conjecture and pseudo-science. Kurzweil, in other books has warned, “the singularity is near” and is quoted as saying “Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.”

This book simply continues to promote that idea albeit already a decade behind his prediction.

There is some good stuff in the book – a host of cocktail conversation fodder. If you are looking for bold predictions – look no further. If you are looking for something you can bank on – buy real estate.

by Chris Doelle