Source: Big Think — February 6, 2012 | Daniel Honan
Move over, David Beckham, Matthew Broderick, Jerry Seinfeld and Donald Trump. The Super Bowl commercial that caught our attention was a Best Buy spot called “Phone Innovators” featuring none other than Big Think favorite Ray Kurzweil.
“I’m Ray Kurzweil,” the futurist and inventor says in the commercial. “I gave your words a voice,” his phone then says.
Source: The Financial Times — March 8, 2013 | Leo Robson
Futurology will always be a mug’s game – of course, I could be wrong – but for changing reasons. Imagination used to leave science behind, now it’s the other way around. The columnist and scriptwriter Charlie Brooker recently found to his irritation that a “digital afterlife” idea he had used in his TV series Black Mirror was not as “fanciful” as he had thought.
Having ignored to his… read more
Source: Forbes — October 14, 2011 | Alex Knapp
Don’t get me wrong — I think that there’s a lot of absolutely fascinating scientific and technological work being done. I’ve no doubt that computers are going to become more tightly integrated in our lives, and I personally believe that as computers get more sophisticated, they’ll enable an incredible unleashing of human creativity. But I think we’re a long way off from from computers that can do… read more
Source: Technology Review — October 12, 2011 | Paul Allen & Mark Greaves
Futurists like Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil have argued that the world is rapidly approaching a tipping point, where the accelerating pace of smarter and smarter machines will soon outrun all human capabilities. They call this tipping point the singularity, because they believe it is impossible to predict how the human future might unfold after this point.
Once these machines exist, Kurzweil and Vinge claim, they’ll possess… read more
Source: PBS Newshour — July 9, 2012
Will we one day be able to live forever? Interesting question, especially for a page where I usually take your financial, rather than science, questions. But what is the goal of economics if not the greatest good for the greatest number of people? Substitute “happy, healthy, never-ending life” for “greatest good” and you can see where we’re going with this.
According to inventor/author Ray Kurzweil, eternal life is now… read more
Source: PBS Newshour — July 10, 2012
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… read more
Source: Wired — October 2002 | Ray Kurzweil
As one of the world’s leading roboticists, Rodney Brooks (Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Chairman of the successful iRobot Corporation) is also the consummate teacher.
He has a penchant for clear explanation and in his latest book, Flesh and Machines, How Robots Will Change Us, Brooks lucidly explores a wide range of themes related to his life with robots.
These range from… read more
Source: The Easton Journal — March 25, 2013 | David W. Wheeler
When futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil says something, I pay attention. So I was pleasantly surprised when, in a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Kurzweil said he expects humans will live forever.
The Director of Engineering for Google and inventor of the Kurzweil speech recognition software used by thousands of schools, Ray Kurzweil is also known for making bold – and uncannily accurate – predictions… read more
Source: IT Conversations & Tech Nation — March 28, 2006 | Moira Gunn
IT Conversations | As part of the recent BioAgenda Summit 2006, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, debates Ray Kurzweil, one of America’s most prolific inventors and a futuristic thinker in his own right.
Their topic? One of the burning questions of our time: Will biotechnology save us? Or hurt us? The answers are nuanced, and they often don’t agree. We’ll find out how… read more
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Wikipedia | Susan Greenfield
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Source: IT Conversations & Tech Nation — September 17, 2005 | Moira Gunn
IT Conversations | Kurzweil’s Talk: “When Humans Transcend Biology”: In this talk from the Accelerating Change Conference in 2005, Ray Kurzweil outlines his startling predictions for the next 25 years. Based on recent progress in the fields of neurobiology and nanotechnology, Kurzweil predicts significant strides in the fight against disease and aging, as well as the augmentation of the human mind.
In the future, the line between… read more
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