Jun 082008
Futurist Ray Kurzweil has glimpsed into his crystal ball and, if he’s to be believed, the twenty-first century might not be as grim as we fear. Here are some of the things he foresees:
- Within 5 years the exponential progress in nanoengineering will make Solar power cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
- In 15 years, life expectancies will start rising faster than we age.
- In about 20 years 100% of our energy will come from clean and
renewable sources, and a computer will pass the Turing Test by carrying
on a conversation that is indistinguishable from a human’s.
But I still get my brain implant that lets me control my wheelchair and assume control of the entire Internet, right? Because I’ve got all kinds of great ideas about what to do once I take over the Internet.
Oh, great news! I’m looking forward to the day I can talk to a machine and shut it off.
I wonder if the wide and varied stock of tones and intonations in a person’s voice will ever be acquired by a machine. A simple example: read out aloud the sentence “Every fallen woman attracts men”, ( Yes, indeed, from The Power and the Glory by good old Graham Greene) and your voice goes down a little bit, doesn’t it? Such riches could hardly be found in a computer voice today.
Heh heh. I wanna be in your good graces when you take over the internet.
Your entries are great, I’ve perused through a few today during my occasional lulls here.
Keep writing, they’re great!!
I wish some of these things were true. I see famine from overpopulation and U.S. debt making any energy way too expensive. The nooks and crannies of my brain are darker. But I love reading your blog. It is especially great for research.
I read Fantastic Voyage, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near, and they changed my life. I even found some of his lectures on Itunes and I find myself impatiently awaiting his next book.
Recently read another incredible book that I can’t recommend highly enough, especially to all of you who also love Ray Kurzweil’s work. The book is “”My Stroke of Insight”” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had heard Dr Taylor’s talk on the TED dot com site and I have to say, it changed my world. It’s spreading virally all over the internet and the book is now a NYTimes Bestseller, so I’m not the only one, but it is the most amazing talk, and the most impactful book I’ve read in years. (Dr T also was named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and Oprah had her on her Soul Series last month and I hear they’re making a movie about her story so you may already have heard of her)
If you haven’t heard Dr Taylor’s TEDTalk, that’s an absolute must. The book is more and deeper and better, but start with the video (it’s 18 minutes). Basically, her story is that she was a 37 yr old Harvard brain scientist who had a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, and thanks to her amazingly loving and kind mother, she eventually fully recovered (and that part of the book detailing how she did it is inspirational).
There’s a lot of learning and magic in the book, but the reason I so highly recommend My Stroke of Insight to this discussion, is because we have powerfully intelligent left brains that are rational, logical, sequential and grounded in detail and time, and then we have our kinesthetic right brains, where we experience intuition and peace and euphoria. Now that Kurzweil has got us taking all those vitamins and living our best “”Fantastic Voyage”” , the absolute necessity is that we read My Stroke of Insight and learn from Dr Taylor how to achieve balance between our right and left brains. Enjoy!