Saturday, January 8, 2011

unending publicity

I have to admit, with all the publicity over the Singularity, etc. these days, I feel pretty good to have published ahead of the curve. :)

Scientific American, for example, just published the latest popular essay on the subject, this one authored by Carl Zimmer and apparently based upon an essay he wrote for Playboy, of all places. It's a pretty standard mix of "gee, a lot of this looks really cool" and "some of this is probably a outside the realm of likely." I'm probably in Zimmer's camp here, though my writings are not generally intended to evaluate the likelihood of any apocalyptic promises made by Kurzweil, Moravec, etc.

My ongoing effort to ensure that credit is found where it is due, however, seems to be a losing effort. In ten pages, Hans Moravec's name never comes up. Vernor Vinge? Yes. Ray Kurzweil? A dozen times or more. Moravec (the man whose work both Vinge and Kurzweil base their promises upon)? No. Sigh.

Maybe I should just send Mr. Zimmer a copy of my book. : )