Source: Forbes — October 2, 2009 | Courtney Boyd Myers
The Singularity is not yet here, but its annual conference is, uniting futurists and their man-machine dreams. Technology futurists love to talk about the Singularity as the point in time when technology starts to progress so rapidly that machine intelligence melds with and surpasses human intelligence. It is to futurists what the Rapture is to fundamentalist Christians.
Source: Andrew Breitbart Presents: Big Hollywood — July 8, 2011 | David Swindle
Consider Transcendent Man, the recent documentary about inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The film is based on his 2005 book The Singularity is Near and builds on his past 20 years of accurate predictions of technological growth. This is the reality we forget: technology is constantly getting twice as powerful, half as expensive, and much smaller.
And the speed of this doubling
Source: William Hertling's Thoughtstream — March 12, 2012 | William Hertling
Notes on Ray Kurzweil’s SXSW keynote, from March 12, 2012 | “Expanding Our Intelligence Without Limit” [#sxsw #IQExpand]
Source: Singularity Hub — October 11, 2012 | Keith Kleiner
Kurzweil’s book on how to create a mind is sure to bring some new spin, as well as plenty of debate to a highly controversial topic. Many claim that the human brain is too complex and too mysterious to be understood or replicated within our lifetimes, if ever.
Others (many who regularly read this site!) on the other hand, recognize that technologies such as Siri and… read more
Source: Coast to Coast AM — February 24, 2013
In the first half, George Knapp welcomed futurist Ray Kurzweil for a discussion on the merging of man and machine as well as his research into reverse engineering the human brain to understand precisely how it works. According to Kurzweil’s estimate, the brain consists of 300 million “pattern recognizers” which assign these trends into hierarchies.
This hierarchy ranges from simple patterns like shapes and sounds, at the low… read more
Source: Wired — November 3, 2000 | Declan McCullagh
Raymond Kurzweil doesn’t merely predict that machine intelligence will surpass human brains by the end of the century. He’s eagerly anticipating it. In a Kurzweillian future, the world would become a very strange place, where converging advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer science combine to propel humanity to its next stage of evolution.
“By the end of this century, I don’t think there will be a… read more
Source: Library Journal — October 1, 2010
[...] The summit’s opening keynote speaker was inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil (pictured), author of The Singularity Is Near, who gave attendees a view from 30,000 feet of the impact of the technological revolution. Asserting that technological change is exponential, he said that “we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century,” but “more like 20,000 years of progress.” Ultimately, he said, we will make… read more
Source: PBS Need to Know — February 16, 2011 | Lauren Feeney
Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil famously and accurately predicted that a computer would beat a man at chess by 1998, that technologies that help spread information would accelerate the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that a worldwide communications network would emerge in the mid 1990s (i.e. the Internet).
Most of Kurzweil’s prognostications are derived from his law of accelerating returns — the idea that information technologies progress… read more
Source: Vice — April 14, 2009 | Rocco Castoro
In the year 2050, if Ray Kurzweil is right, nanoscopic robots will be zooming throughout our capillaries, transforming us into nonbiological humans.
We will be able to absorb and retain the entirety of the universe’s knowledge, eat as much as we want without gaining weight, shape-shift into just about any physical form imaginable, live free from disease, and die at the time of our choosing.
All of this will be thrust on us… read more
Source: Pioneer Press — February 6, 2012 | Tom Webb
Best Buy’s Super Bowl ad, featuring inventors who created innovations for cellphones, is drawing praise from advertising pros, although the wider public greeted it with a shrug.
The 30-second spot veered from the Super Bowl ad practice of using celebrities and showcased real people who invented features like the camera phone, text messaging and the ability to translate voice into text.
Mike Gatti, executive director… read more