One of the consistently fascinating topics of computing is, "When will computer power overtake the human brain?"
Actually, it is only consistently fascinating until it happens, then it is a rapidly forgotten non-event. A close-to-current example being when IBM's Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in chess in 1997. Who bothers to talk about computers and chess now? Likewise, in 2011 another IBM computer, Watson, beat two human champions on the Jeopardy! quiz show. Who is going to talk much about computers' ability to recall trivia now? But I digress...
Kurzweil's topic in this chapter is to outline in fair detail the coming computer technologies and the kind of processing power they will be able to produce. And he compares that to what the human brain produces. He discusses various upcoming computer technologies such as 3D molecular and carbon nanotube computing, and power consumption-reducing techniques such as reversible computing. He talks about how much computing power is needed to emulate the brain, and in an interesting comparison how much potential computing power a rock has.
He also talks about when to expect the singularity. He dates the first phase of it to the 2030's.
This is an exciting prediction, it's close! It's close enough that Kurzweil is doing lots personally to see if he can see the day. (as he mentions later in the book)
But, once again, such a prediction is something I wonder about because those of us humans who are living it won't see it as a singularity, we'll see just more of what we've always been doing.
In sum, this chapter is about computational power.