Science fiction becoming fact: instant information everywhere, infinite bandwidth, quantum computers. What's next? Leading futurists explore the possibilities.

Who Will Rule the 21st Century? By Jack Welch
Straight-line extrapolation shows that China and India, with their faster growth rates, will eventually catch up to the U.S. in terms of pure economic size. But America has a final competitive advantage: its confluence of bright, hungry entrepreneurs and flush, eager investors; and its stable, highly adaptable system. (Added May 25th 2008)

EGOGRAM 2007 By Sir Arthur C. Clarke
The Golden Age of space travel is still ahead of us. Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will gain access to the orbital realm -- and then, to the Moon and beyond, says Sir Arthur, 89. (Added February 7th 2007)

I'm Confident About Energy, the Environment, Longevity, and Wealth; I'm Optimistic (But Not Necessarily Confident) Of the Avoidance Of Existential Downsides; And I'm Hopeful (But Not Necessarily Optimistic) About a Repeat Of 9-11 (Or Worse) By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil responds to John Brockman's The Edge Annual Question - 2007: WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY? (Added February 4th 2007)

What the Future Will Bring By Ray Kurzweil
"Follow your passion," Ray Kurzweil advised graduates in a commencement address on May 21 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of the nation's earliest technological universities. "Creating knowledge is what will be most exciting in life. To create knowledge you have to have passion, so find a challenge that you can be passionate about and you can find the ideas to overcome that challenge." Kurzweil also described the three great coming revolutions-genetics, nanotechnology and robotics-and their implications for our lives ahead. (Added June 15th 2005)

Lunch with Mikhail Gorbachev By Ray Kurzweil
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. (Added April 19th 2005)

Two Stars For Peace By KurzweilAI.net
World order is essential to reducing the time to the Singularity, says author Martine Rothblatt, citing Ray Kurzweil's observation that increased order (and lowered chaos) reduces the interval between salient events in time. In a new book, she suggests an imaginative solution to one major threat to world order: the explosive Palestine/Israeli conflict. (Added January 25th 2005)

Transcending Moore's Law with Molecular Electronics and Nanotechnology By Steve T. Jurvetson
While the future is becoming more difficult to predict with each passing year, we should expect an accelerating pace of technological change. Nanotechnology is the next great technology wave and the next phase of Moore’s Law. Nanotech innovations enable myriad disruptive businesses that were not possible before, driven by entrepreneurship. Much of our future context will be defined by the accelerating proliferation of information technology·as it innervates society and begins to subsume matter into code. It is a period of exponential growth in the impact of the learning-doing cycle where the power of biology, IT and nanotech compounds the advances in each formerly discrete domain. (Added September 27th 2004)

Acceptance Remarks For American Foundation for the Blind Migel Award By Ray Kurzweil
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) presented its Migel 2004 Lay/Volunteer Award on March 6, 2004 to Ray Kurzweil for his extensive work in the field of blindness, optical character recognition, and the Reading Machine for the blind. (Added March 7th 2004)

A Dialogue on Reincarnation By Ray Kurzweil
If you were offered physical immortality as a "Wallerstein brain" (a human brain maintained in a jar interfacing to a virtual reality through its sensory and motor neurons), would you accept it? The question came up in an email dialogue about reincarnation between Ray Kurzweil and Steve Rabinowitz, a practicing attorney in New York City (which he says may explain his need to believe in reincarnation). (Added January 6th 2004)

Personal Fabrication By Neil Gershenfeld
The next big thing in computers will be personal fabrication: allowing anyone to make fully functioning systems -- with print semiconductors for logic, inks for displays, three-dimensional mechanical structures, motors, sensors, and actuators. Post-digital literacy now includes 3D machining and microcontroller programming. For a few thousand dollars, a little tabletop milling machine can measure its position down to microns, so you can fabricate the structures of modern technology, such as circuit boards. (Added October 31st 2003)

Foreword to Virtual Humans By Ray Kurzweil
By the end of this decade, we will have full-immersion visual-auditory environments, populated by realistic-looking virtual humans. These technologies are evolving today at an accelerating pace, as reflected in the book Virtual Humans. By the 2030s, virtual reality will be totally realistic and compelling and we will spend most of our time in virtual environments. By the 2040s, even people of biological origin are likely to have the vast majority of their thinking processes taking place in nonbiological substrates. We will all become virtual humans. (Added October 21st 2003)

The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines By Ray Kurzweil
We are moving towards an era of software-based musical instruments, intelligent accompanists, and music as information, says Ray Kurzweil in highlights from his keynote speech at the 2003 Audio Engineering Society convention. (Added October 14th 2003)

Essay for E-School News By Ray Kurzweil
Speaking at the 18th Annual Conference on "Technology and Persons with Disabilities" at California State University Northridge in March 2003, Ray Kurzweil described how key developments in science and technology will affect society, alter education and other fields, and benefit everyone, especially those with disabilities. This article is based on that address. (Added October 2nd 2003)

The Power of an Idea By Ray Kurzweil
National Federation of the Blind (NFB) founder Dr. Kenneth Jernigan "realized that the pace of technology was accelerating, and these hastening advances would either be liberating for blind people, or would represent another barrier," said Ray Kurzweil in a speech at NFB's 2003 annual convention. Jernigan's solution, a research and training institute, was an example of the power of an idea. (Added July 6th 2003)

The Inflationary Universe By Alan Harvey Guth
What happened before the Big Bang and why is the universe uniform and flat? The inflationary model offers an explanation. It also predicts the observed non-uniformities of the cosmic background radiation based on wild ideas about quantum fluctuations at 10^-35 seconds. Next step: the intersection between cosmology and particle physics. (Added May 1st 2003)

Smart Heuristics By Gerd Gigerenzer
Many people are ill-equipped to handle uncertainty. But the study of smart heuristics shows that there are strategies people actually use to make good decisions that deal openly with uncertainties, rather than denying their existence. (Added April 8th 2003)

Kurzweil responds to Edge challenge, advises Bush By Ray Kurzweil
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. (Added January 26th 2003)

The Cyclic Universe By Paul J. Steinhardt
Is the universe expanding indefinitely--the Big Bang model--or does it go through cycles of expansion and contraction? Paul Steinhardt, who is Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University and on the faculty of both the Department of Physics and the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, suggests a cyclic model that could successfully compete with the Big Bang model. (Added January 23rd 2003)

Kenneth Jernigan’s Prophetic Vision: By Ray Kurzweil
The accelerating growth of technology has brought opportunities to the blind but has also created barriers, says Ray Kurzweil. "At the end of this first decade of this new century, everyone will be on-line all the time with very high speed, wireless communication woven into their clothing. Within a couple of decades, we will have established new high bandwidth pathways of communication directly to and from our brains. Will this represent a great enabler for blind students and workers or a new set of obstructions?" Former National Federation of the Blind president Dr. Kenneth Jernigan's vision of "the world’s first world-class research and training institute for the blind" should help. (Added July 9th 2002)

Book Review: A New Kind of Science By Scott Aaronson
This review of Stephen Wolfram's new book addresses weaknesses in Wolfram's notions of computational complexity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Bell inequality violation. (Added June 24th 2002)

The New Humanist By John Brockman
"Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. A realistic biology of the mind, advances in physics, electricity, genetics, neurobiology, engineering, the chemistry of materials—all are challenging basic assumptions of who and what we are, of what it means to be human. The arts and the sciences are again joining together as one culture, the third culture. Those involved in this effort—scientists, science-based humanities scholars, writers—are at the center of today's intellectual action. They are the new humanists." (Added May 14th 2002)

Reflections on Stephen Wolfram's 'A New Kind of Science' By Ray Kurzweil
In his remarkable new book, Stephen Wolfram asserts that cellular automata operations underlie much of the real world. He even asserts that the entire Universe itself is a big cellular-automaton computer. But Ray Kurzweil challenges the ability of these ideas to fully explain the complexities of life, intelligence, and physical phenomena. (Added May 13th 2002)

2050 Global Normative Scenarios By Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon
Experts were asked to describe normative (preferred) scenarios for technology, human development, and politics/economics in the year 2050. Their ideas were compiled into three scenarios by two leading futurists for the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University. "The authors provide some insightful scenarios," says Ray Kurzweil. "However, I feel that their time frames do not adequately reflect the accelerating pace of progress inherent in what I call the law of accelerating returns. The types of changes they describe for 2050 will arrive much earlier in my view." (Added March 15th 2002)

Millennium 3000 Scenarios By Theodore J. Gordon and Jerome C. Glenn
Experts in various areas were asked to speculate on life in the year 3000. Their ideas were compiled into six scenarios by two leading futurists for the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University. "The authors provide some insightful scenarios," says Ray Kurzweil. "However, I feel that their time frames do not adequately reflect the accelerating pace of progress inherent in what I call the law of accelerating returns. The types of changes they describe for 2050 and 3000 respectively will arrive much earlier in my view, but the issues raised by such developments as femtotechnology and nonbiological intelligence are compellingly described." (Added March 13th 2002)

Intuitive music By Amara D. Angelica
Bob Moog changed musical history 37 years ago with the invention of the first electronic music synthesizer. On February 26, 2002, he received the prestigious Technical GRAMMY Award for his achievements. Here, he looks at the next 37 years. (Added February 26th 2002)

Forecasts and Alternative Futures By Sohail Inayatullah
This third chapter from Situating Sarkar:Tantra, Macrohistory and Alternative Futures explores non-Western future visions, where progress can be seen in a more spiritual than materialistic light, through the eyes of poet and visionary Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar. (Added February 19th 2002)

Rethinking Science and Culture: P.R. Sarkar's Reconstruction of Science and Society By Sohail Inayatullah
The ninth chapter of Situating Sarkar: Tantra, Macrohistory and Alternative Futures by Sohail Inayatullah proposes alternatives to the Western conceptions of science, data, and consciousness, as well as the roles science plays within society. (Added February 19th 2002)

Rethinking Operating Systems By Bob Frankston
We know hardware has become exponentially faster, cheaper and smaller since the advent of the operating system, yet the interface hasn't changed much. In this draft of an essay, Bob Frankston proposes a rethink of the assumptions that went into user interface design thirty years ago. (Added February 11th 2002)

Bob Moog, Interviewed by Electronicmusic.com By Paul Clark and Robert Moog
Electronicmusic.com talks with synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog about how he radically changed the way music is made, and the tools he used to do it. (Added January 29th 2002)

Interview: Robert Moog By Billy Bob Hargus
Robert Moog, inventor and electronic music pioneer, introduced the synthesizer to the world in the 1960s, as well as a spooky sounding device called the theremin. Here he discusses what led to these innovations in sound. (Added January 29th 2002)

What Have We Learned a Year After NASDAQ Hit 5,000? By Ray Kurzweil
The current recession reflects failure to develop realistic models of the pace at which new information-based technologies emerge and the overall acceleration of the flow of information. But in the longer-range view, recessions and recoveries reflect a relatively minor variability compared to the far more important trend of the underlying exponential growth of the economy. (Added January 21st 2002)

How will computation and communication change our everyday lives, again? By Rodney Brooks
How will we all be in the world 20 years from now, when we all have direct wireless connections to the Internet of that time with information services as yet unimaginable? Rodney Brooks 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." (Added January 21st 2002)

What does it mean to have an educated mind in the 21st century? By Roger Schank
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Roger Schank asks: what is an educated mind in the 21st Century? (Added January 21st 2002)

Why is beauty making a comeback now? By Joel Garreau
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Joel Garreau asks: why is beauty back in? (Added January 21st 2002)

The hows and whys of what led to us By Keith Devlin
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Keith Devlin's question is so fundamental that it is arguably not a scientific question at all: It's the big how and why question of existence itself. (Added January 21st 2002)

How different could life have been? By Richard Dawkins
The 5th Annual Edge Question reflects the spirit of the Edge motto: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Richard Dawkins asks: how different could it all have been? (Added January 21st 2002)

Man-Computer Symbiosis By J.C.R. Licklider
Written in 1960, this essay foresaw the growing dependence upon computers for more and more intelligent functions, and an age of human/computer interdependence in which the distinction between the two becomes increasingly blurred. (Added December 11th 2001)

Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network By J.C.R. Licklider
This memo sent from J.C.R. Licklider to his colleagues in 1963 explores the early challenges presented in trying to establish a time-sharing network of computers with the software of the era--ultimately, this vision would lead to ARPANet, the precursor of the Internet in use today. Will the future iterations lead to an Intergalactic Computer Network? (Added December 11th 2001)

Streams By David Gelernter
How will peoples' sense of time change when software and computing technology evolves into new paradigms? In this Edge article, David Gelernter explores space, time and the next generation of computing. (Added December 4th 2001)

Arthur C. Clarke Offers His Vision of the Future By Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Kurzweil
The science fiction visionary behind HAL offers his predictions of salient events to come in this century. (Added December 3rd 2001)

Inventing Modern America: Book Launch and Panel Discussion with Lemelson-Prize Inventors By KurzweilAI.net and Lucas Hendrich
At a launch event for the book on November 27, 2001, five of them discussed their influences, dreams, and where future innovation should focus with the book's author, David E. Brown, and Christopher Lydon, former host of National Public Radio's call-in talk show "The Connection." (Added November 28th 2001)

New Defense Technologies on Talk of the Nation, Featuring Ray Kurzweil By National Public Radio
What new technologies will be developed to defeat terrorism? Ray Kurzweil, David Pogue and Nate Lewis discuss a new iniative designed to spur entrepreneurs into developing creative solutions. (Added November 26th 2001)

The Computer as a Communication Device By J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor
This landmark 1968 essay foresaw many future computer applications and advances in communication technology, such as distributed information resources and online interactive communities that are commonplace today as Internet chat rooms and peer-to-peer applications. (Added November 9th 2001)

As We May Think By Vannevar Bush
This visionary essay, published in 1945, is a reminder that science and technology can and should be pursued as a means for peaceful and beneficial ends, not only warfare. (Added November 1st 2001)

Accelerated Living By Ray Kurzweil
In this article written for PC Magazine, Ray Kurzweil explores how advancing technologies will impact our personal lives. (Added September 24th 2001)

Tribute to Michael Dertouzos (1936 -- 2001) By Ray Kurzweil
In memory of Michael Dertouzos, 1936 -- 2001. (Added August 30th 2001)

Pamela Wallin interviews Ray Kurzweil, with Mike Turner and Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace By Pamela Wallin
Canadian talk show host Pamela Wallin takes a look into the future with Ray Kurzweil, with a special appearance by Mike Turner and Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace, whose album "Spiritual Machines" was inspired by and features narrative from Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. (Added August 27th 2001)

Bill Clinton Calls Many Political Leaders Out of Touch with the Acceleration of Technology at Fortune Summit By KurzweilAI.net
Bill Clinton calls many political leaders out of touch with the acceleration of technology, recommends Non Zero by Robert Wright and The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. (Added August 3rd 2001)

How Fast, How Small and How Powerful? Moore's Law and the Ultimate Laptop By Seth Lloyd
A laptop that looks like a thermonuclear explosion inside of a liter bottle of coca cola? Or a black hole? Read Seth Lloyd's follow up to a Nature article that pushes Moore's Law to the limit. (Added August 2nd 2001)

Foreword to 'The Eternal E-Customer' (book by Bryan Bergeron) By Ray Kurzweil
How have advances in electronic communications changed power relationships? The toppling of a government provides one not-so-subtle example. Ray Kurzweil talks about those advances in this forward to The Eternal E-Customer, a book that looks at the principles companies must adopt to meet the needs and desires of this new kind of customer. (Added July 26th 2001)

Response to Fortune Editors' Invitational By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil was invited to participate in the 2001 Fortune Magazine conference in Aspen, Colorado, which featured luminaries and leaders from the worlds of technology, entertainment and commerce. Here are his responses to questions addressed at the conference. (Added July 11th 2001)

Spielberg catches Kubrick's Baton: A Review of By Ray Kurzweil
The androids and other intelligent machines in "A.I." represent well-grounded science futurism, says AI pioneer Raymond Kurzweil. (Added June 18th 2001)

If Uploads Come First By Robin Hanson
What if we obtain the ability to upload our minds to an artificial medium? What if we can copy ourselves? In this 1994 essay, Robin Hanson looks at the possible social impacts of this question and how human values may evolve. (Added June 5th 2001)

Grasping the Future: Comparing Scenarios to Other Techniques By Max More
It has become a commonplace to hear that change is accelerating. Mention of Moore's Law is now likely to elicit a bored yawn. We have become so used to rapid and accelerating technological and cultural change that it's hard to find it shocking. If we still suffer future shock, we are probably too used to it to notice. Yet it has never been more important to confront the fact of accelerated change for anyone constructing strategy in the information economy. (Added May 9th 2001)

Track 7 Tech Vectors to Take Advantage of Technological Acceleration By Max More
In this update and expansion of his essay, "Taking Advantage of Technological Acceleration," Max More reveals how businesses can keep up with accelerating technologies in seven primary vectors or metatrends. (Added May 9th 2001)

AI (the movie) and AI Panel Discussion at MIT By Amara D. Angelica and Lucas Hendrich
Steven Spielberg's film "A.I." was previewed at MIT on April 20, 2001 at an event that seemed geared more toward humans than futuristic robots. (Added May 7th 2001)

The 10,000-Year Library By Stewart Brand
Much of the information of the past--as well as the present--is endangered or lost forever. Underground rock vaults, "time mail," and a museum built around a 10,000 year clock are some of the ideas for assuring that vital information survives future crashes of civilizations. (Added April 11th 2001)

Nerd of the Week: Ray Kurzweil By Morgan Michaels
Nerdworld's interview with Ray Kurzweil reveals his early influences, his plans for art and poetry software, and his secret about how he invents: lucid dreaming. (Added March 7th 2001)

How to Change the World . . . Quickly By John Petersen
Futurist John Petersen describes a powerful tool that organizations can use for making a desirable future happen, called "normative scenarios." (Added March 7th 2001)

Finishing the Unfinished Revolution By Michael L. Dertouzos
In this manifesto, Dr. Dertouzos introduces a radical vision of human-centered computing intended to make computers more usable, based on natural interaction (such as speech recognition), automation, individualized information access, collaboration, and customization. MIT's Oxygen project, a prototype to test these concepts, is summarized in this excerpt from The Unfinished Revolution (HarperCollins, 2001), (Added February 22nd 2001)

The Web Within Us: Minds and Machines Become One. By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil's vision for the 21st century and beyond includes reverse-engineering the human brain and non-biological intelligences. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Toward Teleportation, Time Travel and Immortality By Raj Reddy
Universal access to instant information and entertainment, personal images captured in 3D (a la Star Wars), telemedicine, and clones with downloaded experiences that live forever are among AI pioneer Reddy's predictions for the next 50 years. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Dear PC: R.I.P. By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil's vision of the post-PC future includes nanobots and fully immersive virtual reality. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Not Your Father's Internet By Bill Gates
Bill Gates envisions the next-generation Internet as a single, unified interface to information instantly available to you anywhere, any time. (Added February 22nd 2001)

Material Progress is Sustainable By John McCarthy
Many people, including many scientists, mistakenly believe that human progress, in the form it has taken in the last few hundred years, is unsustainable," says Stanford University Professor of Computer Science Dr. John McCarthy. In this article, he presents the scientific case for technological optimism. (Added February 22nd 2001)

The Twenty Laws of the Telecosm By George Gilder
This excerpt from Telecosm (Free Press/Simon & Shuster) encapsulates futurist George Gilder's grand vision of the age of the telecosm--in which infinite bandwidth will revolutionize the world. (Added February 22nd 2001)

The Future By David Dalrymple
The future, in the minds of many, is a very far-off place. However, you are in the future now, as perceived by the you that read the last sentence. You are constantly time-traveling at a constant speed. This however is irrelevant. It will take 10 years (back to superficial human time) until 2010. It will take 20 years until 2020. But now let us explore what is in those years and what their product might be. This article is done in a pseudo-fictional manner; it has a story to it, as do the Molly conversations in Editor-in-Chief Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. However, it also has a serious side to it... read on. (Added February 22nd 2001)