At the age of fifteen Ray wrote his first computer program designed to process statistical data. In high school he programmed his computer in a way that it could analyze the patterns in musical
compositions and then compose a new melody from this analysis. In the 80s he built an electronic piano for Stevie Wonder. Later on he worked on the CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer.
His first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines received the award for the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990. The predictions Ray Kurzweil wrote about in 1988 went on to be pretty accurate. Among other things he talks about the emergence of the World Wide Web, which seemed quite far-fetched in the 80s. Would you ever have guessed that something like the Internet would exist?
I could go on and on about this interesting and intelligent man but I wanted to post a link to an interview Vice conducted with Ray Kurzweil. It is an accesible piece of text, so no need to know your AI stuff ;)
TED-movie 2005 / How technology will transform us:
[ted id="38"]
TED-movie 2009 / A university for the coming singularity:
[ted id="560"]
Have you read any of his books? What do you think about his theories? Do you agree or disagree? I’m dying to know so let us start the discussion!
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While I think some of Kurzweil’s ideas are interesting and might come to fruition in a hundred or more years, it is my opinion that his vision of a future in silicon within his lifetime is a bit far-fetched and desperate. He seems to want to preserve himself (and has stated that he think believes he will be able to resurrect his dead father in the near future). His books are written for popular consumption and don’t do a good job of actually looking at his positions from many sides. I would search for Theodore Modis (the man whose research Kurzweil bases his exponential curves on) on google for more information.
Yes you’re totally right that some of his ideas are a bit far-fetched and it’s also true that his books have been ‘commercialized’. I do think that in the way he presents his ideas the theories become more accessible for the ‘normal man and woman’, I guess that’s a good thing in a way.
Thanks for your comment and tip, I’ll google it for sure!
Have a look at an interview with Ray at the Facebook blog, posted July 28, 2009.