In this message posted to the WIRED Future List, Raymond Kurzweil asserts that cloning–replicating animals, organs, and cells–has profound implications for health and well-being of both humans and animals, including a possible solution for world hunger. He also sees no problem with human cloning.… read more
In a hypothetical letter to President Bush, Ray Kurzweil advised him to accelerate FDA review of defensive solutions for bioengineered pathogens, fund a crash program for developing promising new methodologies for human somatic cell engineering, and perfect hydrogen fuel cells, which could have major implications for the economy, the environment, and the geopolitics of oil.… read more
Last week, Paul Allen and a colleague challenged the prediction that computers will soon exceed human intelligence. Now Ray Kurzweil, the leading proponent of the “Singularity,” offers a rebuttal. — Technology Review, Oct. 10, 2011.
Although Paul Allen paraphrases my 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, in the title of his essay (cowritten with his colleague Mark Greaves), it appears that he has… read more
In this Technology Review article, Raymond Kurzweil and Michael Dertouzos debate Bill Joy’s Wired article urging “relinquishment” of research in certain risky areas of nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics.… read more
In an evolutionary process, positive feedback increases order exponentially. A correlate is that the “returns” of an evolutionary process (such as the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall “power” of a process) increase exponentially over time — both for biology and technology. Ray Kurzweil submitted on essay based on that premise to Edge.org in response to John Brockman’s question: “What’s your law?”… read more
Ray Kurzweil ponders the issues of identity and consciousness in an age when we can make digital copies of ourselves.… read more
With only 53,000 engineering graduates a year compared to Russia’s 200,000, the U.S. needs to “communicate the importance of science in today’s world,” Mikhail Gorbachev told Ray Kurzweil in a luncheon discussion that ranged from blogs to nuclear disarmament and longevity.… read more
How technology is changing the ways in which wars are fought, written for “The Futurecast,” a monthly column in the Library Journal.… read more
Since we constantly changing, are we just patterns? What if someone copies that pattern? Am I the original and/or the copy? Ray Kurzweil responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman’s request to futurists to pose “hard-edge” questions that “render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are.”… read more