PBS Newshour | PBS Newshour | Futurist Ray Kurzweil on Melding of Man and Machine

July 10, 2012

PBS Newshour — July 10, 2012

This is a summary. Read original article in full here.

Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been a key voice in our occasional series on the future of technology. The latest installment on the advent of immortality debuted here on Making Sen$e July 9.

As with economist Paul Krugman, our extended interview with Kurzweil included many fascinating bits that didn’t make the final cut. So we continue Tuesday with one of them — a closer look at what Kurzweil has dubbed “the singularity”: the melding of man and machine to the point where one can’t tell one from the other.

Watch the broadcast segment with Ray Kurzweil here.

But in the spirit of your-guess-is-as-good as-mine (if not Kurzweil’s), mind telling us what you think? Will we one day be backing up our memories the same way we save photos to the cloud? Will technology augment our vision, our movement, our thinking from here to eternity? If decrepitude becomes obsolete, would YOU like to live forever?