Ray Kurzweil
Speaking Engagements
In 2008 Ray Kurzweil addressed more than fifty events around the world. His hosts were as diverse as ever: The World Economic Forum, Research in Motion (The world Blackberry conference), Catholic Health Assemblies, Game Developers Conference, Million Dollar Round Table, and the Shanghai Music Show (the biggest musical instrument exposition in the world) to name a few. He recently gave a back-to-back keynote with Barack Obama for 10,000 people at the National Convention of the United Church of Christ (Obama's church). He gave more than twenty five percent of his presentations virtually and in three dimension via Teleportec Teleporter. Many of his appearances went beyond a standard keynote address to include extended audience Q&A, panel discussions, in-depth dialogue sessions, on-stage interviews, podcasts, simultaneous broadcasts, book signings, and press interviews.
With the current economic turmoil, Ray's optimistic viewpoint has been well received by many groups, especially financial audiences. He convincingly argues that the exponential growth of information technology will continue unaffected during the economic downturn as it has in every past recession including the Great Depression. He notes that information technology goes beyond just computerized devices to include such disparate areas as health and medicine, and energy. Ray shows that following every economic contraction, the overall size of the economy snapped back to where it would have been had the downturn never occurred. He presents an incredible wealth of data showing that information technologies have the scale and the ability to overcome virtually every major problems we face. His optimistic remarks have drawn standing ovations from many recent audiences including the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors, Million Dollar Round Table, Rochester Institute of Technology, Software House International, and Research in Motion.
Ray's presentations are incredibly rich with content. His newly redesigned PowerPoint continues to be a key tool in helping audiences visualize exponential trends and future scenarios with multiple up-to-date charts, graphs, animated images, and imbedded movies. In 2008, Ray began to include demonstrations of one of his latest inventions, the kReader Mobile, software for multifunction cell phones used to snap a picture of virtually any document (receipts, signs, mail, handouts) and then read it aloud in English or translate and read it in another language of the users choice. The demo is a perfect entrance into Ray's remarks about exponential growth of technology and its path towards ubiquitous computing, communications, and innovation, and ultimately the merging of human and machine.
Virtual Lectures:
Ray gave eighteen live and interactive virtual lectures in 2008, mostly via Teleportec Teleporter. He is the only speaker in the world to have a Teleportec system installed in his office that enables him to appear as if he were at an event, on stage, in person and in three dimension behind a wooden lectern. It is quite a dramatic illusion and creates a feeling of personal presence far beyond standard videoconferencing. This year Kurzweil Technologies upgraded our in-house studio with professional lighting, a broadcast quality camera specifically optimized for videoconferencing demands, a larger studio layout, and a top-of-the-line Tanberg codec that connects over ISDN lines or the Internet. After six years of successful collaboration with Teleportec, Kurzweil has a comprehensive system to produce a high-quality and reliable virtual appearance. Some events choose standard videoconferencing, which is a cost effective way of having Ray give live remarks followed by interactive Q&A. See link to video and fact sheet under Background Materials below.
Speech Topics:
Ray is best known for presenting a thought provoking, long-term, big picture view of the future of technology and its implications for society; explaining the exponential growth of technology (what he calls, "The Law of Accelerating Returns") and its path towards ubiquitous computing, reverse engineering the brain, full immersion virtual reality, nanotechnology, the merging of human and machine, and ultimately extreme human life extension. He describes a bright future in which technology will provide solutions to the most pressing social, economic, and environmental problems. These ideas form the core thesis of Ray's lectures and his book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking).
After gathering background information about the event, the audience, and the host, Ray is happy to (and accustomed to) tailor his speech. Ray often shapes his presentations around the following topics:
Health and Longevity - Since the release of his book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (2004) and with the recent release of a new health book, TRANSCEND: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (2009), Ray addresses many medical and health related audiences on the merger of science, technology, and medicine and its impact on the healthcare industry and human longevity. He explains that as medicine becomes an information technology it will be subject to the laws of accelerating returns, meaning that it will be a thousand times more powerful than today in ten years, and a million times more powerful in 20 years. For more information on this topic, please see: http://www.fantastic-voyage.net/ and http://www.rayandterry.com/transcend.
Education - Ray presents to many academic groups including educators, administrators, executive boards, and higher education IT specialists about the intersection of information technology (a broad perspective), education and human knowledge. He describes a future in which there is widespread and inexpensive access to education around the world, individualized learning through computer assisted instruction, full-immersion virtual reality classrooms and labs, and ultimately the ability to download knowledge and skills directly to our brains. He remarks on the key role of education in supporting the unique attribute of our species which is an exponential expanding knowledge base that we pass down from generation to generation. He notes that as jobs are destroyed at the bottom of the skill ladder and more satisfying and better paying jobs are added at the top, investment in education has increased to keep pace with the rising skill ladder. Specifically, in 1870 there were 60,000 college students and today there are over 6 million. Expenditures in K-12 education in constant dollars and on a per capita basis have multiplied by ten over the past century. Our economy is increasingly dominated by knowledge intensive jobs hence the increasingly central role of education and educational technology.
Innovation/Invention - As one of the leading inventors of our time, Ray was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. Ray has a presentation that describes a program for innovation, how to foster it in an organization, and how to bring inventions to market. He explains how the law of accelerating returns and the exponential growth of information technology are accelerating opportunities for innovation. In this talk, he draws upon his own history of innovation which led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, founded by the U.S. Patent Office in 2002.
Business/Investing - Ray frequently presents to private equity firms and businesses on technology and the capital markets, business and technology trends, near- and long-term predictions, and strategy in an age of exponential technological growth.
Despite the current economic turmoil, Ray presents an optimistic argument that the exponential growth of information technology will continue unaffected during the economic downturn as it has in every past recession and during the Great Depression, noting that information technology goes beyond just computerized devices, but includes such disparate areas as health and medicine, and energy. In every past recession and the Great Depression, he notes that economic growth snapped back to where it would have been had the downturn never occurred. He presents an incredible wealth of data showing that information technologies have the scale and the ability to overcome the major problems we face such as energy and the environment, health, and even poverty.
Disabilities and Assistive Technologies - Ray explains that accelerating information technology will lead us to completely overcome handicaps associated with sensory and physical disabilities and describes the extent to which we have already done that for many handicaps. He predicts that in about a quarter century we will have millions of nanobots in our brains putting our brains on the Internet and providing high bandwidth communication directly with the brain, so vision will ultimately become obsolete. He can speak on a range of topics relating to blindness, disabilities, and assistive technologies in the 21st century. With his many assistive technology firsts, among them: the first pocket-sized print-to-speech reading machine for the blind (2006), the first Continuous Speech Natural Language Command and Control Software (1997), the first Speech Recognition Dictation System for Windows (1994), the first commercially marketed Large-Vocabulary Speech Recognition, the first Omni-Font (any type font) Optical Character Recognition (1976), and the first Print-to-Speech Reading Machine for the Blind (1976), Ray speaks from experience about the future of disabilities in an age of accelerating technology.
Testimonials provided by Ray's recent hosts:
"Ray's presentation was one of the best sessions we have had at Liberty Hill."
-- William Destler, Ph.D., President, Rochester Institute of Technology
"Our guests were absolutely enthralled with both the technology and the content of the evening. I was especially grateful for the effort that Ray put in to know about Dr. Humayun and about ROPARD. That effort came through as if he had some personal experience with all of us and that was truly a lovely touch." -- Paula Korelitz, Outreach Coordinator, The Association for Retinopathy of Prematurity and Related Diseases (Ray spoke via Teleportec Teleporter)
"Ray's presentation was spectacular, to say the least." -- Sheryl Rapp, The UP Experience
"Ray's lecture was terrific. He generated lots of conversation following the lecture! I think everyone's wheels are still turning in their heads." -- Boleyn Baylor, Office of the Dean, College of Science, University of Arizona
Current and future projects:
* Ray has coauthored a new health book published by Rodale and expected to be a best-seller titled: TRANSCEND: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever. Book release date: April 25, 2009. For more information: http://www.rayandterry.com/transcend
* Ray has written and is producing a full-length motion picture The Singularity is Near, A True Story about the Future, inspired by his New York Times best selling book. Ray stars along side Pauley Perrette (star of NCIS on CBS) with appearances by Alan Dershowitz, Tony Robbins, and many others. For more information: http://singularity.com/themovie/
* Ray is the subject of a thought provoking full-length motion picture documentary titled Transcendent Man: One Man’s Quest to Reveal Our Destiny that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25, 2009. The filmmakers traveled with Ray through twenty major cities and four continents capturing his worldwide speaking tour to ultimately introduce his life, ideas, and journey offering his vision of a future in which we will merge with our machines, can live indefinitely, and are billions of times more intelligent…all within the next thirty years. For more information: http://www.transcendentman.com.
* Ray is a founding member and the future inaugural Chancellor of Singularity University: a university organized around the concept of the Singularity based on Ray's book The Singularity is Near. SU has support from Google and NASA. For more information: http://singularityu.org/.
* 60 Minutes is due to air a profile of Ray in mid 2009. This came about after a producer of the show attended Ray's session, Humanity Now/Humanity Next, at the World Science Festival in New York City on May 29, 2008.
* To learn more about Ray's companies go to: http://www.kurzweiltech.com.
Background Materials:
- A sampling of speech topics, titles, and abstracts
- Compilation of conference testimonials
- Sample PowerPoint presentation
A video of Mr. Kurzweil presenting at Google Zeitgeist (23 minutes), October 26, 2005: http://www.kurzweilai.net/googlez/(Windows Media Player 9 or newer, 320 x 240 image, 89 meg streaming file)
A video of Mr. Kurzweil presenting via Teleportec Teleporter to Advanced Equities, January 3, 2008
