“Well, some amazing changes that are fantastically big and fantastically fast are coming our way,” says noted futurist Alvin Toffler in the much-anticipated movie, The Singularity Is Near, A True Story About the Future, available today.

The Singularity is Near stars Ramona, played by NCIS star Pauley Perrette, a superintelligent avatar (artificial-intelligence- based, human-like virtual person) created by AI wizard Ray Kurzweil (played by himself). Ramona desperately wants to be accepted legally as a human, but faces immediate shutdown by the authorities.

So she turns to (who else?) famous civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz (played by himself) and seeks coaching by Tony Robbins (also played by himself) to discover what it means to be human.

These dramatic scenes punctuate an investigation of our amazing future by Kurzweil in dialogue with 19 “big thinkers,” who explore the impacts of the rapidly accelerating amazing technologies ahead, enriched with animations and graphics.

The movie is available exclusively through store.singularity.com via downloading, DVD, or deluxe box set (including the feature film and more than three hours of bonus material, behind-the-scenes footage, and extended interviews).

Director: Anthony Waller (Mute Witness, An American Werewolf In Paris, The Guilty)
Producers: Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf, and Toshi Hoo
Executive Producer: Martine Rothblatt

A Terasem Motion Infoculture presentation in association with KurzweilAI.net, based on Ray Kurzweil’s New York Times best-selling book The Singularity Is Near.

Film Synopsis

Panel Sponsor | Terasem Motion Infoculture

Panel Synopsis | We live in an era of exponentially increasing advances in artificial intelligence, nano technology, robotics, designer drugs, bionics, and techniques to defeat—and perhaps even reverse—cellular aging. Scientific optimists look forward to a transhuman future when our life expectancy will be dramatically, if not infinitely, extended; when people no longer suffer from disability or disease; when super-intelligent machines will “reproduce” by designing and building their own successors; when the line between humans and computers will increasingly blur, as we “download” our memories and minds into machines and become bionic ourselves. What promises and challenges does this vision of the future hold?

Moderator | Paul Hoffman is the editorial chairman of BigThink.com, a storyteller at The Moth, and an award-winning science writer. His website is www.thepHtest.com.

Panelists | Martine Rothblatt: Ph.D, MBA, lawyer, author and entrepreneur. Ray Kurzweil: One of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers and futurists, with a twenty-year track record of accurate predictions.

My Take | Much of the audience, myself included, who had just watched the quasi-documentary/sci-fi narrative feature film, The Singularity Is Near (based on Kurzweil’s book of the same name), headed over from the Bearsville Theater across the way to Utopia Studios for a panel discussion with the scientific and creative mind behind the film and co-director, Ray Kurzweil, and producer Martine Rothblatt (founder of Sirius Satellite Radio) for a panel discussion moderated by Paul Hoffman. The panel somewhat continued the discussion where last year’s Redesigning Humanity: The New Frontier panel left off. I found both the film and the discussion to be quite fascinating. What if there were technologies to extend our lives, cure certain diseases, artificial intelligence with feelings, and so on? Well it seems as if scientists and technology pioneers are making this happen as analyzed in the film. I didn’t think I would like the hybrid element of mixing a narrative with documentary, but in this case, it really made the topic even more interesting and relatable. The narrative, involving a bot named Ramona with artificial intelligence that is trying to become more conscious and human, pumped a lot of energy into the film, making it very fun and entertaining, despite some hokey acting. What I also learned is that some of this technology can be used for solar panels to create a source of renewable energy, a topic that perhaps we can try to address at the Environmentally Speaking: Improving Our Planet with the Power of Film panel discussion this Sunday at 2:00 P.M. (shameless plug). Below are some highlights of The Singularity Is Near panel discussion.

Notes | Before getting into some of the broader questions the panel would address – Kurzweil’s and Rothblatt’s visions of the future, what society needs to do to get there, and what obstacles they might encounter – Hoffman asked Kurzweil to define Singularity. Kurzweil said the core idea behind Singularity is the exponential growth of Information Technology. Computer growth has doubled by a billion in 25 years. It is not intuitive, the only thing that is constant is change, but change is not a constant. Our intuition about the future is that it is linear, not exponential. He has debated with other scientists whether Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) will pass the turn test in 20 years. His view is that the view of exponential growth is underestimated. The other key point is that it is not just gadgets, but biology, the premise of biotechnology. The reason to be concerned about this is it holds the key to solving the major challenges in humanity: energy, the environment, disease, longevity, and poverty. On the other hand, biotechnologies can be abused, for example biological weapons for terrorism.

Hoffman said Singularity is the point in which A.I. reaches and surpasses human intelligence, but when will this happen. According to Rothblatt, this is a misleading question to answer, because intelligence isn’t something that’s concrete. She alludes to Kurzweil’s point in the film and his book that there are hundreds of A.I. applications that come into existence year after year, and the film begins that the Singularity has already begun. The question really is, when will non-flesh-based intelligence demonstrate consciousness (such as the character of Ramona in the film) and when will this artificial person care about its existence, and we as human should really care about this artificial person? She thinks it will happen in a few decades. Kurzweil said it’s a philosophical matter of personal belief about the consciousness of A.I., his being that “if it seems conscious, it is.” If it passes the turn test, we will come to believe that they conscious, and he believes we’ll get to that threshold in about 20 years.

There’s the future, and then there’s now, 2010. Hoffman asked the panel what they feel the most amazing things are happening now in these fields, such as biomedicine. Rothblatt said she thinks the most incredible thing going on now is stem cell research. She referred to an Australian company taking a male baby’s foreskin and using it to grow in a laboratory environment to grow fresh tissue that can be transplanted on burn victims [Side Note: I actually knew a little bit about this fact through the documentary, Partly Private, which deals with circumcision. I handled publicity for this film and it won the award for Best New York Documentary at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival J]. Rothblatt’s company focuses on the lungs for people dying of lung cancer, and they’re working on growing fresh air sacks to be re-planted back into the patient.

Of nanotechnology, what is an example of something that has worked in a lab, Hoffman asked. Kurzweil said an application of nanotechnology are new solar panels that have been created that have resulted in the price per watt coming down. There’s also an emerging field of creating three-dimensional objects by re-organizing molecules.

How do these new technologies change human relations, Hoffman asked. Rothblatt said it will bring people closer together. Her point of view is that we’ve moved two steps forward and one step back. There is an emerging global consciousness. More than half the people in the world now have means to communicate with everyone via cell phones. Kurzweil added that decentralized communication has a positive democratizing effect.

Hoffman looked back on the turn of the 19th to 20th Century when there seemed to be a sense of technological optimism. Is there that same sense now? Kurzweil articulated what the key thesis is – if you measure the underlying properties of Information Technology, it was an amazingly smooth exponential. It’s not an erratic curve. Hoffman interjected to say that it wasn’t his point to examine the growth of I.T., but how it is handled. Kurzweil said there will always be plusses and minuses, and things have come a long way. There are things we could be doing, and we’re not. That’s why it is important to understand the potential of today’s technology.

Hoffman said he learned from one of the interview subjects in the film, that as people live longer, there will be no murder, because it will be so morally reprehensible to take someone’s life. How will that vanish? Rothblatt said no one’s arguing that evil deeds are going to vanish, but that the ratio of good versus bad in the world is continuing to increase. In the future, everyone will routinely back up his or her brain, which could possibly federally mandated. One reason there wouldn’t be murder, is that everyone would come back as his or her virtual selves.

Why are there so many smart people at the top of their fields who think that Kurzweil’s vision in the film is inaccurate, Hoffman asked. Kurzweil said these skeptics are linear thinkers. He questioned why people stick to this perspective. No one had ever really adopted exponential growth emotional, but the acceptance of exponential growth and its implications is growing. Rothblatt said it’s just human nature, not about the technological change. Now matter how intelligent you are, humans will be naturally threatened.

Hoffman asked the panel to discuss more about what they think is going to happen in the future. Rothblatt said it comes to a concept of being able to operate across multiple bodies. We’re accustomed to having one mind and one body. Once we’re able to abstract our consciousness outside of our body, you can then operate your mind across multiple bodies. Because of this exponential intelligence, you’ll be able to be aware of you multiple selves at the same time. Kurzweil said a trend to look at is virtual reality, Second Life for example, even in its brief existence so far, it is moving toward greater realism. Imagine how illicit and compelling these virtual environments will be in 20 or 50 years.

One question asked from the audience to Martine was will there be an end to racism, and will machines have a sense of social belonging? She said the thesis of her foundation that helped fund this film is that that race is fiction, but racism is real. Trying to define the human species as separate races is just a mental construct, but racism is totally real. What she is concerned about is this mapping over into non-fleshed race. A concept brought up in the film is fleshism. We have to be able to accept people whatever their appearance or virtual appearance and think about the behavior and their nature, but not their physical manifestations.

The film will soon be made publicly available in 2011 in the U.S. and internationally.

Futurist/inventor Ray Kurzweil comes to the Woodstock Film Festival this year with his film The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, based on his bestselling book of the same title.

“You can have an AI (artificial intelligence robot) that learns the same way a human does. The whole paradigm of the human brain is that it gains a lot of its ability through its interaction with the environment,” Kurzweil said. [...]

A panel discussion featuring Ray Kurzweil and Martine Rothblatt will follow the screening at 3:00 p.m. at Utopia Studio, 293 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. A second screening for the film will be held on Sunday, October 3, 8:00 p.m. at the Upstate Films Rhinebeck, 6415 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY. Individual tickets to screenings and panels are available online now at the Woodstock Film Festival website.

The Singularity Is Near, A True Story About the Future

A Q&A session with Ray Kurzweil and Martine Rothblatt will immediately follow the screening. The film is among 61 competing in the Documentaries of the World category at the 12-day festival. More info

The Singularity Is Near, A True Story About the Future

Wednesday, September 1 @ 12:40 pm
Buy tickets to this screening time: click here.

Thursday, September 2 @ 5:00 pm
Buy tickets to this screening time: click here.

The Singularity Is Near, A True Story About the Future, by filmmakers Anthony Waller, Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, with Executive Producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture), makes its international premiere on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at the 34th annual Montreal World Film Festival. A Q&A session with Ray Kurzweil and Martine Rothblatt will immediately follow the screening. The film is among 61 films competing in the Documentaries of the World category at the 12 day festival.

ABOUT THE FILM | The feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil’s New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near. He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers.

“Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future,” according to Bill Gates. “Kurzweil envisions a future in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable humanity to transcend its biological limitations –transforming our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine.”

Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an “AI” seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. The movie, The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

For more information about the film visit the movie’s official website.

MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE SCREENING | The Singularity Is Near will premiere Tuesday, August 31, 7:30 p.m. at the Cineplex Odeon Quartier Latin, 350 Rue Emery Street, Montreal, QC, H2X 1J2. A Q&A session with Ray Kurzweil and Martine Rothblatt will immediately follow the screening.

TICKETS AND PASSES | Passes to festival screenings are available online now at ffm-montreal.org. Tickets to individual screenings will go on sale August 21. For more information please visit the Montreal World Film Festival official website.

ABOUT THE MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL | The mission of the Montreal World Film Festival is to encourage cultural diversity and understanding among nations, to foster the cinema of all continents by stimulating the development of quality cinema, to promote filmmakers and innovative works, to discover and encourage new talents, and to promote meetings between cinema professionals from around the world. Every year, films from more than seventy countries, including well-known and first-time filmmakers alike, are selected. For more information: ffm-montreal.org.

ABOUT RAY KURZWEIL | Inventor Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading futurists, with a 20-year track record of accurate predictions. Called the “restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” Inventor of the first CCD flat bed scanner and many other firsts, Kurzweil is an inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world’s largest for innovation), and 19 honorary doctorates and awards from three U.S. presidents.

ABOUT MARTINE ROTHBLATT & TERASEM MOTION INFOCULTURE | Martine Rothblatt, J.D. Ph.D. started the satellite vehicle tracking and satellite radio industries and is the Chairman of United Therapeutics, a biotechnology company headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland. Dr. Rothblatt founded Terasem Motion InfoCulture with a mission to create exciting media products on the themes of diversity, unity and joyful techno-immortality. This includes films, DVDs, webcasts, and CDs, among other formats. For more information: teraseminfoculture.com.

Tech professionals have become somewhat inured to descriptions of the exponential rise in computing power in what is commonly described as Moore’s law. But when inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil strings together dozens of examples on logarithmic graphs to support his claims of an imminent transformational moment in history, it’s an intellectual jolt.

Kurzweil’s books have attracted a wide following and his latest project, a film, The Singularity Is Near, evokes a more immediate visceral reaction to his projections on how an ever accelerating technology will increasingly reshape the very fabric of our physical reality and living experience.

The movie utilizes the device of dual story lines. The main thrust is a high-level review of technological trends presented through snippets of Kurzweil’s interactions with about 20 leading technologists/scientists and futurists. Most are squarely on-board with Ray, agreeing that we are on the cusp of an epochal shift and eager to discuss the profound implications on a range of fields including energy, medicine, health, and law.

Although environmentalist Bill McKibben questions the morality of imposing such vast changes upon on our own lives and shared ecosphere, and technologist Bill Joy reflects on the dangers inherent in these new technologies, most see the shift as inevitable and generally of tremendous benefit for those of us lucky enough to be alive to experience it. [...]

The feature-length documentary film, by filmmakers Anthony Waller, Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, with Executive Producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture), explores the provocative arguments from Kurzweil’s New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near.

He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains an optimistic view of the future while acknowledging profound new dangers.

The New York premiere screening of the film is scheduled for June 24, 2010 at the Time & Life building in New York City, presented by the World Technology Network (WTN) in association with Time magazine.

The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About the Future, by filmmakers Anthony Waller, Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, with Executive Producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture) premieres on June 24, 2010 at the Time & Life building in New York City. The WTN convenes various events in association with Time, Fortune magazine, CNN, Science magazine and The American Association for the Advancement of Science, among others.

This feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil’s New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near. He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers.

“Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future,” according to Bill Gates. “Kurzweil envisions a future in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable humanity to transcend its biological limitations — transforming our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine.”

Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an “AI” seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. The movie, The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

The World Technology Summit is a global annual gathering of the leading innovators in the world in science and technology, to inspire and educate each other. The conference is a living embodiment of the WTN motto, “Encouraging Serendipity.” Nominations are still being accepted for this year’s World Technology Awards program, and registration is now open for the World Technology Summit & Awards event in the Fall. (Participants in this WTN Film Series kick-off event on June 24th can apply their fee toward their Summit registration.) 
   

PROGRAM & TICKET INFORMATION

The Singularity Is Near will make its New York premiere on Thursday, June 24 at 5:30 p.m. at the Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas (50th Street and 6th Avenue), New York, NY. An audience Q&A with Ray Kurzweil, moderated by Moria Gunn, host of NPR’s “Tech Nation” will immediately follow the screening. For more information, please visit the event’s official website here.

   
PROGRAM SCHEDULE

5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Welcome champagne reception 
6:00 p.m. – 6:05 p.m. Opening remarks by James P. Clark, Founder/Chairman, WTN 
6:05 p.m. – 6:35 p.m. “The Singularity and the Law of Accelerating Returns,” talk by Ray Kurzweil
6:35 p.m. – 7:55 p.m. “The Singularity Is Near” film screening 
7:55 p.m. – 8:20 p.m. Q & A with Ray Kurzweil, moderated by Moira Gunn, Host, NPR’s “Tech Nation” 
8:20 p.m. – 8:30 p.m Closing remarks by James P. Clark, Founder/Chairman, WTN  
     

ABOUT RAY KURZWEIL

Inventor Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading futurists, with a 20-year track record of accurate predictions. Called the “restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” Inventor of the first CCD flat bed scanner and many other firsts, Kurzweil is an inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world’s largest for innovation), and 19 honorary doctorates and awards from three U.S. presidents.

 
ABOUT MOIRA GUNN

Dr. Moira Gunn is Host of Tech Nation and BioTech Nation, which air on such venues as National Public Radio’s SIRIUS Satellite Radio channels NPR Now and NPR Talk, and internationally to 177 countries via American Forces Radio International. Produced at the studios of KQED in San Francisco, the programming can also be heard on over 200 domestic public stations and through podcasts via iTunes and other Internet distribution venues. More than simply radio, the family of Tech Nation programs seeks to educate the public on the issues of science and technology. They demonstrate that all aspects of our lives are affected, and to make reasonable decisions, we must understand much, much more — as individuals, as communities, as nations and as a global society.
 
 
ABOUT THE WORLD TECHNOLOGY NETWORK (WTN)

The WTN brings key players together — from the most cutting-edge technologists to the most forward-thinking financiers, from the most conceptual futurists to the most grounded entrepreneurs, from the most insightful science writers to the most savvy marketers, from the most big-picture government officials to the most focused policy analysts, and from the world’s leading corporations to the world’s newest start-ups — helping to make things happen sooner and better than they might have.

The WTN exists to “encourage serendipity” — the happy accidents of colliding ideas and new relationships that cause the biggest breakthroughs for individuals and institutions. The WTN works to accomplish its mission through global and regional events for its members (and others) to help make connections among them, and to examine the likely implications and possible applications of emerging technologies.

For more information please visit The World Technology Network.
For more information on the 2010 World Technology Summit & Awards please click here.
  
CONTACT
World Technology Network
Pamela Tucker, 917.414.2004
press@wtn.net

KurzweilAI.net
Sarah Reed, 781.263.0000
Public Relations Manager
SReed@Kurzweiltech.com

or

Celia Black, 360.320.8087
Media Relations
Celia@Kurzweiltech.com

The screening and special presentations will be held in the historic Time & Life Building, and will kick off the new WTN “Imagined Worlds” Film Series as a lead-in to the 2010 World Technology Summit & Awards to be held later this fall (November 30 – December 1, 2010) in association with Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, CNN, Science Magazine and The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The World Technology Summit is a global annual gathering of the leading innovators in the world in science and technology, to inspire and educate each other.

This feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil’s New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near. He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers.

Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an “AI” seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. The movie, The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

An audience Q&A with Ray Kurzweil, moderated by Moria Gunn, host of NPR’s “Tech Nation,” will immediately follow the screening. Advance tickets for the event are $35 ($55 after June 20).

The feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil’s New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near. He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers.

Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben.

Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an “AI” seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

The Breckenridge Theater (operating as the Backstage Theater) is located at 121 South Ridge Street, Breckenridge, CO 80424. A discussion with Ray Kurzweil will immediately follow the screening. More information

The Singularity Is Near: The Movie does exactly what Ray Kurzweil set out to do. It’s a movie version of the book, with two running through lines. In documentary style, we have Ray discussing his ideas about the Singularity, with commentators variously supporting or refuting or worrying about his ideas.

With Bill McKibben in the role of the friendly flat out opponent; Bill Joy playing the reasonable but worried man; and Mitch Kapor doubting the technological possibilities — they are all worked into the weave to (at least) let us know that not everybody believes that a) The Singularity is Coming and b) It’s going to work out well. K. Eric Drexler, MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, desktop manufacturing guru Neil Gershenfeld and many many more are woven in to support the idea — and the more hopeful potentials — of accelerating change leading to radical alterations in life (itself).

The value added here for those h+ types already familiar with this discourse includes the clarity and concise expression of the ideas presented in Ray’s doorstopper sized book, and lots of very groovy, trippy, and playful graphics (including an apparent parody of the opening of Fringe.) And then there’s the integration of a fictional narrative into the whole thing. The story revolves around Ramona, Kurzweil’s alter ego and virtual/AI persona. This is the same Ramona who is interviewed throughout The Singularity Is Near book, where her role is to tell us what life is like at various points in time in the future.

To some extent, she plays that same role here, but she also supplies some drama. And while the acting here will not win any academy awards, Ramona is put into several perilous situations and — one of them, at least — is rather affecting. (I’m not going to give anything away, except to say that there’s a courtroom scene, and you’ll find yourself rooting for her.) There are some funny elements too, including a very direct nod at The Matrix. Ultimately, like the book, The Singularity Is Near: The Movie is an advocacy/teaching film. I wouldn’t count on cinema critics to find in it a glorious work of art. But it’s a total blast to sit through (even with Tony Robbins and Alan Dershowitz) and it’s definitely going to get around and blow minds, spark debate, thought and study.

Singularitarians will want to show this to friends and family, and even for those who don’t believe in the singularity but support transhumanist ideas, there’s a whole lot about nanotech, biotech and AI to tweak interest and excitement.

I can’t wait to see the final version.

The feature-length film, directed by Anthony Waller and produced by Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, executive producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture), explores the controversial ideas of Ray Kurzweil, based on his New York Times best-selling book by the same title.

Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with leading experts, such as former White House counter-terrorism advisor, Richard Clark; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, and Robert A. Freitas, Jr.; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; and music luminary Quincy Jones.

Kurzweil illustrates possible scenarios of his imagined future with narrative scenes starring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins.

For more information: Sonoma Film Festival and The Singularity Is Near – The Movie.

Ramona, a virtual person, in a scene from the movie (Image: © Ray Kurzweil & Terasem Motion Infocuture Presentations)

Based on Ray Kurzweil’s New York Times bestselling book, this is a documentary scheduled for release in late 2009. It is a documentary with a storyline woven through it, similar to What the BLEEP Do We Know?

I was the on-set Visual Effects Supervisor, the Effects Art Director, and Supervised the completion of over 400 greenscreen, set extension and matte painting shots in 8 months. The elephant animation is by Miguel Fuertes.

When I say “Supervised,” I actually mean that I did most of the work myself. There was no budget to hire anyone to help me, so I just worked as quickly and as efficiently as possible. There was so much to do that, early on, I gave up attempting to do “film-quality” effects. Instead, I tried to do something a bit more stylized.

I worked on the storyline portion, which concerns a digital person named Ramona, portrayed by Pauley Perrette, as over time she develops from something similar to a Second Life avatar to a full-fledged, autonomous human. My work was mostly in the realm of greenscreen plates with digital sets, but I also developed the look transforming Pauley into Ramona’s simple avatar. There were roughly 15 sequences, of which the majority was effects shots.

One of the biggest issues on the film was the FX editorial work. The production used Final Cut Pro, but had no budget for FX editorial, so I had to do all of that myself, too.

This article on the movie's special effects was featured in the December, 2009 issue of "Creative Communities of the World" magazine

Unfortunately, Final Cut does not lend itself to manufacturing shots for effects production with handles. The “Media Managed Export” would not trim shots to length if the source file was used more than once on the timeline – it would span the shots instead. Most of what I was doing would involve every shot in a sequence as an effects shot, so I had to break the sequence down and export to separate shot directories, all by hand. I would try to structure my Shake scripts so that shots that were “same as” could be reused for each subsequent shot.

There was a great deal of rotoscoping necessary due to the unfortunate expedient of covering the lovely green floor with sand for 5 sequences. I used Mocha for my roto work, and it works fantastically. I separate the roto as sort of an articulated paper doll, with one spline for upper arm, one for lower, etc., then use the planar tracker to follow the body motion, and finally, clean up the outline.

In addition to Ramona, there was also Ramona’s digital helper, Samantha, who is represented as a sort of pixie type. For close up there was an actress, but the wide shots used a digital model I created. There were probably a hundred of those shots.

All four movies have the same general topic and largely similar casts of characters, but each views the future through a different lens. Not very comforting for those curious about the potentially greatest change humanity may ever face. Check out the trailers after the break.

So what’s the Singularity: crackpot idea, oncoming danger, Pinocchio story, or humanity’s hope? Each film chooses a different angle. What’s really amazing is that these movies are all spontaneously coming from different producers/directors. There’s a developing trend to discuss the issues of technology and intelligence even if most of the world has no idea what the Singularity means. I guess that whether you’re a technophile or a technophobe, there’s something to debate when you bring up the future. Even if you think the whole thing is one giant hair-brained notion you’ll at least get a kick out of the enthusiasm through which these films approach the subject.

Four movies about the Singularity, clockwise from top left: Transcendent Man, We Are the Singularity, The Singularity Is Near, The Singularity Film (Image: Singularity Hub)

The special program, An Evening with Ray Kurzweil, is part of the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s acclaimed “Science on Screen” series.

Based on the book of the same title, the The Singularity Is Near film combines a documentary featuring Kurzweil interacting with leading thinkers on the impact of exponentially expanding technologies on the nature of human life in the next half century, and a drama featuring Ramona, an avatar created by Kurzweil, as she becomes increasingly humanlike and independent. She hires Alan Dershowitz (who plays himself) to press for her legal rights as a person, and receives coaching from Tony Robbins, who also plays himself, to learn the secret of what it means to be human.

Kurzweil will also show the trailer of director Barry Ptolemy’s Transcendent Man documentary film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week, charting Kurzweil’s journey to bring his ideas about the Singularity to a worldwide audience. Kurzweil will discuss these films and give a presentation on their implications for the future, and will lead a question-and-answer session following his talk.

With “Science on Screen,” the Coolidge showcases a feature film, documentary, or preview based in science, paired with exciting presentations by notable figures from the worlds of science, technology and medicine. Created by Richard Anders and launched in 2005, this monthly series is co-presented by the Museum of Science, Boston and New Scientist magazine. Tickets available online or at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline, Mass, 617.734.2500.