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Ray Kurzweil

James N. Gardner

The Intelligent Universe: Ai Et and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos Hardcover – Import, 17 February 2007

by James Gardner (Author)

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What is the ultimate destiny of our universe? That is the striking question addressed by James Gardner in The Intelligent Universe. Traditionally, scientists (and Robert Frost) have offered two bleak answers to this profound issue: fire or ice. In The Intelligent Universe, James Gardner envisions a third dramatic alternative--a final state of the cosmos in which a highly evolved form of group intelligence engineers a cosmic renewal, the birth of a new universe.

Print length

264 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Career Press
Publication date

17 February 2007
Dimensions

18.42 x 2.54 x 25.4 cm
ISBN-10

1564149196
ISBN-13

978-1564149190
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Rizwan Virk
134
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James N Gardner
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Review

"There is little doubt that Gardner's ideas will change yours." --Seth Shostak

From the Back Cover

"Once again, Gardner takes on the biggest of themes--the function and future of the universe. Could it be that life, a humble bit of dirty chemistry on a tiny planet, is actually the `man behind the curtain,' pulling the levers that will actually guide the future of an entire cosmos? This book dares to tread on a landscape that few other writers have yet imagined. Provocative and prescient."
--Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer, SETI Institute

"Jim Gardner is a man who thinks BIG! And it doesn't come any bigger than the universe itself. This profound meditation on the future of the universe and the central role intelligence plays in that drama will keep you enthralled with the possibility that we ARE the universe. Bon voyage on the intellectual journey of the year!"
--Dr. John Casti, Wissenschaftzentrum Wien and IIIAS, Vienna, Austria author of Paradigms Lost and The Cambridge Quintet

"You may not agree with everything in this book, but I guarantee you will be challenged to rethink your basic assumptions about the universe, theology, and life itself. This beautifully written cosmic journey takes you to the outermost realm of current thinking about the universe and our place in it. It is a journey that will raise your cosmic consciousness, and it is a journey that humanity needs to undertake."
--Dr. Steven J. Dick, NASA chief historian, director, NASA History Division

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Career Press; 1st edition (17 February 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1564149196
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1564149190
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 18.42 x 2.54 x 25.4 cm

Customer Reviews:
14 ratings

About the authors

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Ray Kurzweil
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Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called "the restless genius" by The Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes magazine, he was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." PBS selected him as one of the "sixteen revolutionaries who made America."
Ray was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.
Among Ray’s many honors, he received a Grammy Award for outstanding achievements in music technology; he is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, holds twenty-one honorary Doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents.
Ray has written five national best-selling books, including New York Times best sellers The Singularity Is Near (2005) and How To Create A Mind (2012). He is Co-Founder and Chancellor of Singularity University and a Director of Engineering at Google heading up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding.
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James N. Gardner
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James N. Gardner is a widely published complexity theorist and science essayist whose peer-reviewed articles and scientific papers have appeared in prestigious scientific journals, including Complexity (the journal of the Santa Fe Institute), Acta Astronautica (the journal of the International Academy of Astronautics), and the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. He has also written popular articles for WIRED, Nature Biotechnology, The Wall Street Journal, and World Link (the magazine of the World Economic Forum).
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Mr. David Queva

Good beginning...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2010

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The beginning of the book is tremendously interesting and summarizes all current knowledge about the universe. When you reach the appendices though (and that means quite a few pages), the author keeps repeating something like "In my previous book called... I developed the idea that..." and it feels like you're watching a TV programme and have to go through commercials. I found it particularly annoying. A very good read otherwise.

One person found this helpful

John Martineau

Probably the best book on the Universe to date

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 June 2009

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James Gardner follows up his excellent BIOCOSM with this seminal text which includes and expands on his earlier thinking concerning the Anthropic Principle, acknowledged by Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal of the UK), Penrose and even Dawkins as probably the most interesting conundrum facing modern science. If you don't know what the Anthropic Principle is (and most people don't), I suggest you read Rees' JUST SIX NUMBERS. In a nutshell, Gardner expands the principle of Darwinian evolution and applies it to the entire universe, arguing that life, intelligence and consciousness are emergent properties of a properly set up Big Bang, and that finely-tuned universes like our own will evolve into super conscious organisms which can have children (via other finely-tuned Big Bangs), with the fine tuning itself being cosmic DNA). It sounds far out, and it is. But it is also probably not far from the truth, and I would not be surpised if Gardner's basic ideas long outlive him.
With speculative forays into artificial life, computer consciousness, the Fermi Paradox, religion, and other more sci-fi-like frontiers of discussion, Gardner also manages to summarise much of the cutting edge of thinking about these current and fast-evolving fields, and these sections of the book will probably date the fastest.
The book could have benefitted from a little more editing and time spent on layout and design (although it is less home-spun than BIOCOSM, which had endless inserts and boxes that interupted the read), but he is clearly devoted to explaining himself as clearly as possible, and these are small quibbles.
This book deserves to be widely read and discussed.

3 people found this helpful

Chad M

Intriguing book about the future of humanity. Includes excellent reference material.

Reviewed in the United States on 12 January 2019

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"Gardner's vision is that life and intelligence are at the very heart of the elegant machinery of the universe. This viewpoint has won praise from an array of leading scientists, including Britain's Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, and Templeton Prize winner Paul Davies." (Overleaf).
In this book, James Gardner explores how several scientific ideas and new technologies are providing us with opportunities for a long-term future on Earth, in the Solar System, and throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. Based on further expansion of the internet and improvement of AI, applying cooperative evolution theories and facts (the Neo-Gaian Hypothesis, p. 64) to more human and political relations (i.e. the fusion of species or groups can provide more strength, if circumstances are right), and developing space flight and radio astronomy (including nuclear powered rockets and METI), Gardner puts forward an optimistic vision of the 21st century, very much in contrast to the negative views often voiced by conventional politicians.
In general, the author has looked deep into the past of the Universe, and of life and evolution. Agreeing with Heinz Pagels that the very laws of nature and structure of the universe -- the Cosmic Code -- strongly favors the emergence of life, conscious beings, civilization, and high technology, the author raises the question of whether we are moving towards a second great revolution in the course of life.
That is, in the beginning it was the Universe or God who brought about the universe and the world, and now, with our intelligence and freedom, we can continue this creative endeavor.
Significantly, we could not have done this just a few centuries ago, or maybe even a few decades ago.
In his advocacy of this bold vision that we are destined for greatness on Earth and in the Universe, and apparently because of his sense of humility and responsibility, Gardner cites many other scientists with earlier or related views and writings (Newton, Leibniz, Einstein, Von Neumann, Wheeler, Kurzweil, Rees, Dyson, and several others).
For some time I have also shared this view. However, achieving the vision means that allies need to be found, and soon.
A variety of high-risk trends are now gaining speed in the 2010s and will probably continue into the 2020s. The kind of freedom, not to mention resources, finances, and energy sources needed for a worldwide internet and reliable power grids in every nation is still a challenge that is eluding the UN, the G-20, and many developing world nations. It could be that our high level of material consumption will, over the next several decades, start to undermine or even reverse several key gains in liberal democracy, freedom, food supplies and, later on, the ocean and climate conditions that are most beneficial for modern life. Instead of becoming more spiritual and free as a result of industry and technology, bad public policy choices and trends may be leading us back into the Dark Ages, where our lives and careers are focused on mere survival, with very little time for high art and culture, and for volunteering, research, writing, and exploration.
Therefore, while I am inspired by Gardner's writings I also have to question whether the Congress, foundations, civic associations, wealthy individuals, and volunteers and writers from many backgrounds are willing to work harder and more intensely, to accept less government spending on certain programs to boost the spending on future-oriented ones, and to sometimes pay more fuel and use taxes. After all, the physical infrastructure that is deeply connected with modern life is part of the foundation for the Biocosm and the Intelligent Universe (p. 158, 166)
As just one example of budget priorities that adopt a more spiritual and future-focused emphasis rather than on ameliorating ordinary medical conditions and routine poverty, how many of Bill Gates' or Vaclav Smil's ideas about natural resources, family planning, and energy are being well funded and implemented? Just as the universe needs both the laws of nature and the elements, the planets, the periodic table, energy and so on for life to emerge; so too do the ideas of our scientists and thought leaders need the funding, votes, and infrastructure to bring them to fruition.
Going forward, the role of the media and government are vital to Gardner's vision. Yet, due to the scope of the book, he seemingly avoids the practical or financial aspects of the Intelligent Universe ideal (where life emerges here and then reaches throughout the Solar System, and begins to send out computer code and messages to far away stars). Therefore, it remains somewhat opaque as to whether wealthy corporations or national governments will take the lead in high-technology, AI, space colonization, and specialized radio astronomy projects. The first approach leads us towards something of a "Blade Runner" type world, or a society like that in the "Fortress World" scenario described by Allen Hammond in "Which World?" (WW), while the second way would mean a more efficient government, with a wider range of priorities, and a "Transformed World" scenario, with R&D and infrastructure funding doubled or tripled by 2025, together with increases in special purposed foreign aid expenditures.
Maybe Gardner is not very concerned about whether industrialists or governments lead humanity towards a long-term stable and civilized future, or whether this may emerge through some combination of the two. Yet, as I look at the world scenario in 2019, and the delays at the Department of Energy's nuclear reactor projects, the repeated problems, delays, and scandals in Congress, I can only have tempered optimism for a future which brings about the Intelligent Universe.

2 people found this helpful

Steve Skye

What else is there to think about?

Reviewed in the United States on 2 August 2008

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I have often wondered if there will ever be a discovery or event that will change our understanding of the nature of things so profoundly that we can never return to our previous concepts, I think this book provides that. This is the feeling I get when reading of the remarkableness and inconceivably of the evolution our life-friendly universe. I find it hard to imagine anything less when considering how the elements of carbon created from super novas eventually, though the immense span of time, developed into self-aware intelligence. Then when continuing the idea to the reasonable speculation that this may have been the result of a pre-programmed design and will possibly eventually result in replication of another universe, it seems that there is nothing more important to discuss or think about.

I consider this one of the most profound books I have ever read about the most important scientific/philosophical conjectures. What made this book so enjoyable was the author's writing style, his choice of words were succinct and added to the profundity of his thoughts, reading it made me feel more intelligent. If I were to have read this book in my 20's I think I would have decided to become a cosmologist.

6 people found this helpful

R.H.Page

The Big Picture.. on Steroids!

Reviewed in the United States on 6 September 2012

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If you're trying to make sense out of the whole shebang, as I am, this is a book you have to possess and pour over. It includes innumerable excerpts from nearly all the big names in modern science who have speculated on the meaning of it all. It makes a good case for the cosmos as a self-organizing emergent entity, learning and evolving like a developing organism. It's alive!

3 people found this helpful

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