CONCEPT
Bridge Technologies
Kurzweil's term for temporary structures built from present materials to channel exponential change during transitions—adequate now, obsolete soon.
A bridge technology is a structure, institution, or practice built to manage a transitional period—connecting where a civilization is to where it needs to be, serving present needs with present resources, and understood from inception to be temporary. Kurzweil developed the concept to distinguish between endpoint solutions and transitional infrastructure. The eight-hour workday was a bridge technology governing industrial labor during the transition to automated production. Copyright law was a bridge technology governing information reproduction during the transition to digital abundance. Each served its era and became inadequate as the underlying exponential advanced. Bridge technologies are not failures when they become obsolete—they are successes that fulfilled their purpose and prepared the ground for their successors. The concept maps directly onto Edo Segal's beaver's dam metaphor: structures built to slow the current, maintained continuously, replaced when the current changes course.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Kurzweil's bridge technology framework responds to a critique his work has faced repeatedly: that his long-term predictions about the singularity offer no guidance for people living through the transition.