Get in the dustbin of history, along with all the other dullards and their foolish claims of what science will never accomplish.

And indeed, we have….these other examples that other people have mentioned, like the supposed self-driving cars of 2004/2005, fall under that….those guys are not reading the quote correct (taking it too literally) and making a strawman argument out of it. Google has indeed demonstrated the technology he predicted and, as a company, are a much better choice then, say, the man who demonstrated those self-driving cars again….

In short, they are making a strawman argument in order to vent their dislike of supposed American arrogance….sheesh >_<

For example, what was the first “car?” Was it the first steam powered tractor? The first internal combustion engine powered vehicle? It all depends on how you define “car,” first and “invent,” making the argument little more than a semantic one. Get off your high horse. You look silly riding it.

In 1994, the twin vehicles of Daimler-Benz (VITA-2) and UniBwM (VaMP) drove more than one thousand kilometers on the three-lane highway in standard heavy traffic around Paris at speeds up to 130 km/h. On the 1758 km trip in 1995 from Munich in Bavaria to Odense in Denmark, the robot achieved speeds exceeding 175 km/h (roughly 110 mph).

And 5 years later, Kurzweil proudly predicted self-driving cars for 2009 :-)

As I said in an earlier comment, let’s hope this collaboration won’t be limited to postdicting and replicating ancient results. (Then Gordon of Toronto put me straight.)

This is the biggest Tech announcement in a decade. Unless it isn’t.
C’mon guys, get it together….

There are many things whose invention was at first ignored by Americans just because it happened in other countries first, and some of those were even outright copied (maybe some people should think about this before critizising China).

Us-Americans are somewhat notorious for doing this (at least in Europe), and it is a great source of annoyance especially for Europeans who are “lucky” enough to have to talk to Americans about any field/science which the latter didn’t study in depth before.Of course, if you know nothing about something, you may believe all things that are modern come from just one country…

If you’re writting, it can happen that you’ll be censored if you speak (“write”) out.

I guess all this making noise and all this chest-beating stems from the fact that many people attach their self-esteem to the achievements of others, through group affiliation.

Anyway, a list of “stolen” achievements would be so big, it would be ridiculous, so I give just some examples with “references”:

The “telephone”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews

The computer:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm

and the internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Similiar tendencies to lay-claim to ideas, inventions etc seem to exist in many (all?) groups -altough not to such an extent, and two factors strike me as being strongly correlated:
-Low general education
or – lack of specific knowledge in a field

Provincial media does its part to foster these tendencies, too.

Have a nice day;)

Ps: If I get “censored” again, maybe you’d at least tell me what I did wrong;) Maybe I should add more balance/ be more polite (political), even though this would ignore reality!?

I predict within a decade:
* a pedestrian will be killed by a self-driving car with the estate being sued by Google for damage to the fender;
* 80% of Google staff will be eating Ray’s pills & herbs; and,
* no one will remember this post, not even us.

Are you kidding? In 1994, Ernst Dickmanns already had self-driving cars much faster than any car Google has developed since 2005. From Wikipedia:

Two culmination points were achieved in 1994/95, when Dickmanns´ re-engineered autonomous S-Class Mercedes-Benz performed international demonstrations. The first was the final presentation of the PROMETHEUS project in October 1994 on Autoroute 1 near the airport Charles-de-Gaulle in Paris. With guests on board, the twin vehicles of Daimler-Benz (VITA-2) and UniBwM (VaMP) drove more than one thousand kilometers on the three-lane highway in standard heavy traffic at speeds up to 130 km/h.

The second culmination point was a 1758 km trip in the fall of 1995 from Munich in Bavaria to Odense in Denmark to a project meeting and back. Both longitudinal and lateral guidance were performed autonomously by vision. On highways, the robot achieved speeds exceeding 175 km/h (roughly 110 mph; there is no general speed limit on the German Autobahn). Publications from Dickmann’s research group indicate a mean autonomously driven distance without resets of ~9 km; the longest autonomously driven stretch reached 158 km.

That is, 5 years after the fact, Kurzweil predicted self-driving cars for 2009.

I have a similar prediction for you. Within a decade, people will be able to use little hand-held devices to call other people!

Let’s hope this collaboration won’t be limited to postdicting and replicating ancient results.

Congratulations Ray – this is awesome news!

Jason

Live long and prosper!

Think, please.. The man has had some very good ideas (and results) but this rampant fanboi nonsense is exactly that. Nonsense.

crazy genius + cashflow…. = crazy cool ideas to market

love this combo…. now go get the future and bring it back to us stuck in today

Maybe we we all should try to act more consistent…;)

Pretty soon when you boot up, Ramona will pop onto the screen as the voice of Google. She will be the first thing you see and everybody will have a nice chat with her every morning when they turn on their computers.

Just you wait and see.