Mind at light speed

At first glance I took this book to be a fairly shallow look at the gee-whiz technologies that might come about in the future. When I got down to reading it I was pleasantly surprised. The author has a deep knowledge of the subjects he tackles, whether it's Einstein's 1905 papers or the collapse of behaviourist psychology. But the book doesn't need specialist knowledge on the part of the reader; I would say that if you have a basic knowledge of computers then you will have no problems with this book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a peek at the possibilities for the future of computers.

The book starts by looking at three phases of the development of optical technology - optoelectronics, all-optical devices and quantum optics - and considers the performance gains at each stage. Now optical computation is an obvious choice for image processing, and Nolte examines how this compares with the way our brains process visual information and then goes on to look at how such processors might be able to deal with language. This leads on to the possibilities of artificial intelligence based on optical processing. The last two chapters look at quantum technology comes into the picture, with its potential for cryptography and teleportation.