Reverse-engineering the human brain

This level of processing power is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving human-level intelligence in a machine. The organization and content of these resources — the software of intelligence — is also critical. The most compelling scenario for mastering the software of intelligence is to reverse-engineer the human brain — to essentially copy its design — so these machines will seem very human. And through  nanotechnology , they will have human-like — but greatly enhanced — bodies as well. Having human origins, they will claim to be human, and to have human feelings. And being immensely intelligent, they'll be very convincing when they tell us these things.
 

The Web as virtual reality arena

The nanobots will do more than scan the brain. They will also extend it. One vital application will be full-immersion virtual reality — a VR induced by the interaction of nanobots with the brain. We already have electronic devices that can detect and even control the firing of neurons — essentially creating two-way communication between electronic and neural circuits (such as the "neuron transistors" demonstrated at Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry. Scientists have also demonstrated that biological and nonbiological neurons can work together on pattern recognition tasks just like an all-biological network.
 
When we want to experience real reality, the nanobots do nothing. If we want to enter virtual reality, they suppress all of the inputs coming from the real senses, and replace them with signals appropriate for the virtual environment. Your brain would then send signals intended to cause your muscles and limbs to move as you normally would, but the nanobots again intercept these interneuronal signals, suppress your real limbs from moving, and instead cause your virtual limbs to "move" while providing the appropriate movement and reorientation (as well as sounds and tactile sensations) in the virtual environment.
 
The Web will provide a panoply of virtual environments to explore, and "going" to these Web environments will not require any equipment not already in our heads. Some will be recreations of earthly places; others will be fanciful environments that have no "real" counterpart. Some would be virtual worlds that seem to violate laws of physics. Want to fly? Walk on walls like a spider? You can, in this virtual world. We'll be able to visit these virtual Web environments alone, or we'll meet others there, people both real and simulated. Ultimately, there won't be a clear distinction between the two.
 

Beyond the 21st century

Can the pace of technological progress continue to speed up indefinitely? Will we not reach a point where humans are unable to think fast enough to keep up with it? With regard to unenhanced humans, clearly so. But what would a million scientists, each a thousand times more intelligent than human scientists today, and each operating a thousand times faster than contemporary humans (because the information processing in their nonbiological, Web-based brains is faster) accomplish?
 
For one thing, they would come up with technology to become even more intelligent (because intelligence is no longer of fixed capacity). They would change their own thought processes to think even faster. When the scientists evolve to be a million times more intelligent and operate a million times faster, then an hour could result in a century of progress.
 
Once a species develops computing technology, it's only a matter of a few centuries before the nonbiological form of their intelligence permeates the matter and energy in its vicinity, and then expands outward. Ultimately, it becomes capable of maneuvering and controlling cosmological forces through its exquisite and vast technology, and creates the world it wants.
 
What kind of world will that be? Wait and see.