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== Vita, inventiones, palmae ==
Kurzweil [[Queens]] in urbe [[Novum Eboracum|Novi Eboraci]] adolevit. Saecularibus parentibus [[Iudaeus|Iudaeis]] ex [[Austria]] circa annum [[1939]] effugitis, multas opiniones diversas per pueritia cognovit. Iuvenis, libros de [[fictio scientifics|fictione scientifica]] cupide legit. Ante duodecim annos natum, suum primum [[programma computatrale]] conscripserat, et in [[schola superior]]e excogitavit multiplex programma documentum agnoscens, quod, musicis gravissimorum compositurm carminibus explicatis, sua carmina in rationibus similibus synthesizavit. Huius inventionis facultates fuerunt tam graves quam anno [[1965]] fuit in programmate televisifice ''[[I've Got a Secret]]'' ([[CBS]]), cum musicam pro [[clavile]] compositam ab computatro quod fecerat cecinit.<ref>[http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=7515&schedID=457 Conloquium in programmata ''Book TV'' in [[C-SPAN|C-SPAN-2]] die [[5 Novembris]] [[2006]]; exsecutio clavilistica videtur prope initium.]</ref> <!--
Later that year, Kurzweil won First Prize in the International Science Fair for the invention, and he was recognized by the Westinghouse Talent Search and was personally congratulated by President Lyndon Johnson during a White House ceremony.
Anno [[1968]], during Kurzweil's sophomore year at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]], Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers submitted by each student applicant. When he was 20, he sold the company to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000 plus royalties. He earned a [[Bachelor of Science|BS]] in Computer Science and Literature in 1970 from [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]].
In 1974, Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and developed the first omni-[[typeface|font]] optical character recognition system--a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Up until that time, scanners had only been able to read text written in a very narrow range of fonts. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine for the blind, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them out loud. However, this device required the invention of two enabling technologies--the [[Charge-coupled device|CCD]] [[flatbed scanner]] and the text-to-speech synthesizer. Under his direction, development of these new technologies was completed, and on January 13th, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a widely reported news conference headed by Kurzweil and the leaders of the [[National Federation of the Blind]]. Called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the device covered an entire tabletop, but functioned exactly as intended. It gained him mainstream fame: on the day of the machine's unveiling, Walter Cronkite used the machine to give his signature soundoff, "And that's the way it was, January 13, 1976." While listening to [[Today (NBC program)|The Today Show]], musician [[Stevie Wonder]] heard a demonstration of the device and personally purchased the first production version of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, beginning a lifelong friendship between himself and Ray Kurzweil. Furthermore, in 1977, then-Massachusetts governor [[Michael Dukakis]] publicly met with Kurzweil and congratulated him for the invention.
Kurzweil's next major business venture began in 1978, when Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. [[LexisNexis]] was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload paper legal and news documents onto its nascent online databases.
Two years later, Ray Kurzweil sold his company to [[Xerox]], which had an interest in further commercializing paper-to-computer text conversion. Kurzweil Computer Products thus became a subsidiary of Xerox known as [[Scansoft]], and Kurzweil functioned as a consultant for the former until 1995.
Kurzweil's next business venture was in the realm of electronic music technology. After a 1982 meeting with [[Stevie Wonder]] in which the latter lamented the divide in capabilities and qualities between electronic synthesizers and traditional musical instruments, Kurzweil was inspired to create a new generation of music synthesizers capable of accurately duplicating the sounds of real instruments. To this end, Kurzweil Music Systems was founded in the same year, and in 1984, the Kurzweil 250 was unveiled. The machine was capable of imitating a number of different types of instruments, and in tests even musicians were unable to discern the auditory difference between the Kurzweil 250 on piano mode from a normal grand piano. The recording and mixing abilities of the machine coupled with its aforementioned abilities to imitate a variety of different instruments made it possible for a single user to compose and play an entire orchestral piece.
Kurzweil Music Systems was sold to Korean musical instrument manufacturer [[Young Chang]] in 1990. As with [[Xerox]], Kurzweil remained as a consultant at the larger company for several years more.
Concurrent with Kurzweil Music Systems, Ray Kurzweil created the company Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (KAI) to develop computer speech recognition systems for commercial use. The first product, which debuted in 1987, was the world's first large-vocabulary speech recognition program. Later, the company combined the speech recognition technology with medical expert systems to create the Kurzweil VoiceMed (toda called Clinical Reporter) line of products, which allow doctors to write medical reports by speaking to their computers instead of writing. KAI still exists today as ScanSoft.
Kurzweil started [[Kurzweil Educational Systems]] in 1996 to develop new pattern-recognition-based computer technologies to help people with disabilities such as blindness, [[dyslexia]] and [[Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder|ADD]] in school. Products include the award-winning Kurzweil 1000 text-to-speech converter software program, which enables a computer to read electronic and scanned text aloud to deaf or hearing-impaired users, and the Kurzweil 3000 program, which is a multifaceted electronic learning system that helps with reading, writing, and study skills.
In 1999, Kurzweil created a hedge fund called "FatKat" (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies), which began trading in 2006. He has stated that the ultimate aim is to improve the performance of FatKat's A.I. investment software program, enhancing its ability to recognize patterns in "currency fluctuations and stock-ownership trends." <ref>http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/</ref> He stated in his 1999 book ''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]]'' that he believes computers will one day prove superior to the best human financial minds at making profitable investment decisions.
Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-[[typeface|font]] optical character recognition system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the [[blindness|blind]], the first [[Charge-coupled device|CCD]] [[flatbed scanner]], the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first electronic musical instrument capable of recreating the sound of a [[grand piano]] and other [[orchestra]]l [[Musical instrument|instrument]]s (which he developed at the urging of [[Stevie Wonder]], who was amazed by his OCR reading machine), and the first commercially marketed large-[[vocabulary]] speech recognition system. He has founded nine businesses in the fields of OCR, music synthesis, speech recognition, [[reading technology]], [[virtual reality]], financial investment, [[Simulated patient|medical simulation]], and [[cybernetic]] [[art]].
The inventor attributes his success in marketing technology products to being able to predict the arrival date of competitively priced components and match it to rollout of his designs, for example, the hand-held book reader built into a digital camera.<ref name=CSPAN_interview/>
[[Image:Raymond Kurzweil Fantastic Voyage.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Raymond Kurzweil]]
Kurzweil was inducted in 2002 into the [[National Inventors Hall of Fame]], established by the [[United States Patent and Trademark Office]]. He received the $500,000 [[Lemelson-MIT Prize]], the United States' largest award in invention and innovation, and the [[1999]] [[National Medal of Technology]], the nation's highest honor in technology.
He has received scores of other awards, including the 1994 Dickson Prize ([[Carnegie Mellon University]]'s top science prize), Engineer of the Year from ''[[Design News]]'', Inventor of the Year from [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] in 1998, the [[Association of American Publishers]]' award for the ''Most Outstanding [[Computer Science]] Book'' of 1990, and the [[Grace Murray Hopper Award]] from the [[Association for Computing Machinery]] and he received the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in 2000. He has received thirteen [[honorary doctorate]]s, a 14th scheduled in 2007, and honors from three [[U.S. president]]s. He has been described as “the restless genius” by the ''Wall Street Journal'', and “the ultimate thinking machine” by ''Forbes''. ''Inc.'' magazine ranked him #8 among entrepreneurs in the United States, calling him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison,” and [[PBS]] included Ray as one of sixteen “revolutionaries who made America”, along with other inventors of the past two centuries.<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/filmmore/s1.html PBS - They Made America: "Revolutionaries"]</ref>
Kurzweil's musical keyboards company [[Kurzweil Music Systems]] produces among the most sophisticated and realistic (and expensive) [[synthesizer|synthesized]]-sound creation instruments. [[Kurzweil Music Systems]] was sold to Korean piano manufacturer [[Young Chang]] in the early 1990s and its founder was no longer involved in the company; however, [[Hyundai]] purchased Young Chang in 2006 and appointed Ray Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer as of February 2007, to help them "build Kurzweil Music Systems into one of the largest music instruments brands in the world".<ref>[http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2007/02/01/raymond-kurzweil-back-at-kurzweil-music-systems/ Raymond Kurzweil Back At Kurzweil Music Systems!]</ref>
Kurzweil has created his own twenty-five year old female [[rock music|rock]] star [[alter ego]], "[[Ramona (computer program)|Ramona]]", whom he regularly performs as through [[virtual reality]] technology to illustrate the as-yet untapped possibilities of computers to enhance and alter our interpersonal interactions. This project inspired the plot of the movie ''[[S1m0ne]]''.<ref>[http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,42031-0.html Ray Kurzweil, Material Girl]</ref>
In 2005, Microsoft chairman [[Bill Gates]] called Ray Kurzweil "the best at predicting the future of artificial intelligence".<ref>[http://www.cio-today.com/news/Bill-Gates-Talks-Up-Wetware/story.xhtml?story_id=00100017HFPX Defunct link: please fix]</ref>
Kurzweil has been associated with the [[National Federation of the Blind]], many of whose members use his products. He began working with the NFB in the 1970s, and has been described as a great friend by the movement’s former President [[Kenneth Jernigan]] and current president, Marc Maurer. After speaking at their convention in 2005, he received a special award, an honor received by few sighted people. At their convention in 2007, he received another high honor, the Newell Perry Award. Since about 2004, he has participated, along with the NFB and one of his own companies, [[Kurzweil Educational Systems]] in the development of the [[KNFB Reader]], a reading machine for the blind which is smaller and more powerful than those previously available.
==Stand on nanotechnology==
Kurzweil is on the Army Science Advisory Board, has testified before Congress on the subject of [[nanotechnology]], and sees considerable potential in the science to solve significant global problems such as climate change, viz. [http://www.qsinano.com/pdf/ForbesWolfe_NanotechReport_July2006.pdf Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill (July, 2006)].<ref name="Global_warming">[http://www.qsinano.com/pdf/ForbesWolfe_NanotechReport_July2006.pdf Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill (July, 2006)]</ref><ref>[http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=7515&schedID=457 Nanotech and climate change in C-SPAN interview on [[C-SPAN|CSPAN-2]] [[Book TV]], [[November 5]], [[2006]] (about 1 hour into 3 hr interview)]</ref>
In addition he advocates using [[nanobot]]s to maintain the human body and to extend human lifespan beyond current [[palliative]] drug-based and nutritional attempts.
He has stressed the extreme potential dangers of nanotechnolgy, but argues that, realistically, progress cannot be totally stopped, and any attempt to do so will retard the progress of defensive and beneficial technologies more than the malevolent ones, ''increasing'' the danger. He says that the proper place of regulation is to make sure progress proceeds safely and quickly.
He applies this reasoning to biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and technology is general.
==The Law of Accelerating Returns==
In his controversial 2001 essay, "The Law of Accelerating Returns", Kurzweil proposes an extension of [[Moore's law]] that forms the basis of many people's beliefs regarding a "[[Technological Singularity]]".<ref>[http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 "The Law of Accelerating Returns"]</ref> Kurzweil's grand vision of a coming Singularity is not without its critics. Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Corporation, has called the notion of a Singularity "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people. This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different---it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me." <ref>[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/ Fortune Magazine, "The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth," 14 May 2007, by Brian O'Keefe.]</ref>
==Transhumanism==
Kurzweil is an enthusiastic advocate of using technology to achieve [[immortality]]. He advocates using [[nanobot]]s to maintain the human body, but given their present non-existence he adheres instead to a strict daily routine involving ingesting "250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea" to [[Life extension|extend his life]] until more effective technology is available.<ref>[http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66585,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3 Wired News: " Never Say Die: Live Forever"]</ref>
In December 2004, Kurzweil joined the advisory board of the [[Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence]].
In October 2005, Kurzweil joined the scientific advisory board of the
[[Lifeboat Foundation]].
On [[May 13]] [[2006]], Kurzweil was the first speaker at the [http://sss.stanford.edu/ Stanford University Singularity Summit].
[[Futures studies|Futurism]], as a philosophical or academic study, looks at the medium to long-term future in an attempt to predict based on current trends. Raymond Kurzweil states his belief that the future of humanity is being determined by an exponential expansion of knowledge, and that the very rate of the change of this exponential growth is driving our collective destiny irrespective of our narrow sightedness, clinging archaisms, or fear of change. Our biological evolution, according to Kurzweil, is on the verge of being superseded by our technological evolution. An evolution conjoined of cogent biological manipulation with a possible emerging self-aware, self-organizing machine intelligence. The rate of the change of the exponential explosion of knowledge and technology not only envelops us, but irreversibly transforms us.
Accordingly, in Kurzweil's predictions, we are currently (''as of the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century'') exiting the era in which our human biology is closed to us, and are entering into the [[Posthuman (Human evolution)|posthuman era]], in which our extensive knowledge of biochemistry, neurology, and cybernetics will allow us to rebuild our bodies and our minds from the ground up. Kurzweil believes that [[Strong AI vs. Weak AI|Strong A.I.]], advanced [[nanotechnology]] and [[cybernetics]] are enabling technologies that will initiate the Posthuman Era through a disruptive, worldwide event known as the [[Technological Singularity|Singularity]]. By extrapolating past and current trends of technological growth into the future, Kurzweil has concluded that the aforementioned technologies will be available in 2045, and that the [[Technological Singularity|Singularity]] will thus occur in the same year.
Kurzweil is generally considered to be among the most personally optimistic of futurists, both because he views the [[Singularitas Technologica]] as almost inevitable and because he believes that the outcome will likely be beneficial for the human race. However, the ultimate future he envisions often leaves some of his less [[technophilia|technophilic]] colleagues cringing at the overtones of a future which has often been portrayed in science fiction as [[dystopian]]: one in which humans are fused with or dominated by machines and technology so thoroughly that human meaning and the "''human spirit''" are lost completely.
==Accuracy of predictions==
===''The Age of Intelligent Machines''===
Arguably, Kurzweil gained a large amount of credibility as a futurist from his first book ''[[The Age of Intelligent Machines]]''. Written from 1986-89 and published in 1990, it correctly forecast the [[History of the Soviet Union (1985–1991)|demise of the Soviet Union]] (1991) as new technologies such as cellular phones and fax machines critically disempowered authoritarian governments by removing state control over the flow of information. In the book, he extrapolated preexisting trends in the improvement of computer chess software performance to correctly predict that computers would beat the best human players by 1998, and most likely in that year. In fact, the event occurred in May of 1997 when chess World Champion [[Gary Kasparov]] was defeated by [[IBM Deep Blue|IBM’s Deep Blue]] computer in a well-publicized chess tournament. Perhaps most significantly, Kurzweil foresaw the explosive growth in worldwide Internet usage that began in the 1990s. At the time of the publication of ''[[The Age of Intelligent Machines]]'', there were only 2.6 million Internet users in the world <ref>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_2001_Feb/ai_70910777/pg_3</ref>, and the medium was unreliable, difficult to use, and deficient in content, making Kurzweil's realization of its future potential especially prescient given the technology's limitations at that time. He stated that the Internet would explode not only in the number of users but in content as well, eventually granting users access "to international networks of libraries, data bases, and information services." Additionally, Kurzweil correctly foresaw that the preferred mode of Internet access would inevitably be through wireless systems, and he was correct to estimate that the latter would become practical for widespread use in the early 21st century.
Kurzweil accurately predicted that many documents would exist solely on computers and on the Internet by the end of the 1990s, and that they would commonly be embedded with animations, sounds, and videos that would prohibit their transference to paper format. He foresaw that cellular phones would grow in popularity while shrinking in size for the foreseeable future.
Kurzweil's views regarding the future of military technology were likewise supported by the course of real-world events following the publication of ''[[The Age of Intelligent Machines]]''. His pronouncement that the world's foremost militaries would continually rely on more intelligent, computerized weapons was illustrated spectacularly just a year later during the 1991 [[Gulf War]], which served as a showcase for new weapons technologies. The trend toward greater computerization of weapon systems is further demonstrated by the increased use of precision munitions since the publication of Kurzweil's book. For example, 10% of all U.S. Naval ordinance expended during the [[Gulf War]] were guided weapons. During the 1999 [[Kosovo War|Kosovo campaign]], that quantity climbed to 70%, and it reached 90% during the 2001-2002 [[Operation Enduring Freedom]] in [[Afghanistan]].<ref>http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2003/Mar/Precision_Weapons.htm</ref> As he predicted, remotely controlled military aircraft were developed, beginning with the [[MQ-1 Predator|Predator]] reconnaissance plane in the mid-90's, and an armed version of the aircraft was first used in combat in November of 2002.<ref>http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/predator/</ref>
Kurzweil described the future of computer-controlled, driverless cars, claiming that the technology to build them would become available during the first decade of the 21st century, yet that due to political opposition and the general public's mistrust of the technology, the computerized cars would not become widely used until several decades hence. In fact, considerable progress has been made with the technology since 1990, and [[General Motors]] is scheduled to unveil a new electronic car system called "Traffic Assist" in its 2008 [[Opel Vectra]] model. "Traffic Assist" uses video cameras, lasers and a central computer to gather and process information from the road and to make course and speed changes as needed, and is supposedly capable of driving itself without any input from the user in speeds below 60 mph, making it a true driverless car <ref>http://www.newemotion.it/en/car.php?ProdID=402</ref> "Traffic Assist" will not be exclusive to the 2008 [[Opel Vectra]] for long as [[General Motors|GM]] has announced plans to offer the system for several other types of cars before the end of the decade. <ref>http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=107011</ref> Due to stricter U.S. product liability laws, the system will not be available in America for the foreseeable future and will only be offered in Europe. <ref>http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=107011</ref>
Kurzweil predicted that pocket-sized machines capable of scanning text from almost any source (a piece of paper, a road sign, a computer screen) and then reading the text out loud in a computerized voice would be available "In the early twenty-first century" and would be used to assist blind people. In June of 2005, he unveiled the [[K-NFB Reader|"Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" (K-NFB Reader)]], which is a reading machine possessing the aforementioned attributes. <ref>http://www.knfbreader.com/index.html</ref> However, he claimed back in 1990 that the readers would be able to recognize and describe symbols, pictures and graphics in addition to words, read multiple languages, possess wireless Internet access, and be in use with "most" blind and dyslexic people, and perhaps among some normal people as well. While the [[K-NFB Reader]] does not have these final attributes, it is entirely possible that the device may be upgraded to the necessary level before the nebulously defined "early twenty-first century" expires.
===''The Age of Spiritual Machines''===
In 1999, Kurzweil published a second book entitled ''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]]'', which goes into more depth explaining his futurist ideas. The third and final section of the book is devoted to elucidating the specific course of technological advancements Kurzweil believes the world will experience over the next century. Entitled "To Face the Future," the section is divided into four chapters respectively named "2009", "2019", "2029", and "2099"--each chapter title signifying a different year. For every chapter, Kurzweil issues predictions about what life and technology will be like in that year.
While the veracity of Kurzweil's predictions for 2019 and beyond cannot yet be determined, 2009 is near enough to the present to allow many of the ideas of the "2009" chapter to be scrutinized. To begin, Kurzweil's claims that 2009 would be a year of continued transition as [[Flash drive|purely electronic computer memories]] continued to replace [[Hard disk drive|older rotating memories]] seems to be vindicated by the current growth in the popularity and cost-performance of [[Flash drive|Flash memory]]. He correctly foresaw the growing ubiquity of wireless Internet access and cordless computer peripherals. Perhaps of even greater importance, Kurzweil presaged the explosive growth in peer-to-peer filesharing and the emergence of the Internet as a major medium for commerce and for accessing media such as movies, television programs, newspaper and magazine text, and music. He claimed that three-dimensional computer chips would be in common use by 2009 (though older, "2-D" chips would still predominate), and this appears likely as IBM has recently developed the necessary chip-stacking technology and announced plans to begin using three-dimensional chips in its supercomputers and for wireless communication applications.<ref>http://www.physorg.com/news95575580.html</ref>
In ''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]]'', Kurzweil spent time discussing future increases in computing use in education. He predicted that interactive software and electronic learning materials would be used by 2009. Indeed, smartboards, interactive whiteboards with a connection to the Internet and learning software and activities are commonly used in schools in developed nations.<ref>http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Boards/</ref>
Kurzweil went further to say that students would commonly have portable learning computers in the form of a "thin tablet-like device weighing under a pound." While students increasingly use portable laptops in schools, they tend to be of traditional configuration and of greater weight. But supporting Kurzweil's prediction is the emergence of the [[XO-1 (laptop)|One Laptop Per Child Project]], which aims to provide low-cost laptop computers (often called the "$100 Laptop") to students in developing nations across the world. The computer can be quickly reconfigured from traditional laptop layout to a tablet-like "e-book reading" layout.<ref>http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/features.shtml</ref> However, the current model of the [[XO-1 (laptop)|$100 Laptop]] weighs well over a pound.<ref>http://laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml</ref> The first batch of 5 million laptops<ref>http://content.undp.org/go/newsroom/january-2006/100-dollar-laptop-20060128.en?categoryID=349425&lang=en </ref> is expected to ship sometime in 2007.<ref>http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/software/2007-01-02-one-laptop_x.htm</ref> By the end of 2009, there could be millions more in use across the world, vindicating Kurzweil's belief that portable computers will be playing a central role in education.
However, it should be noted that text-to-speech converters remain uncommon, along with computerized distance learning, which were two other technologies Kurzweil imagined in widespread use by 2009.
Kurzweil restates his earlier prediction from ''[[The Age of Intelligent Machines]]'' regarding the advent of pocket-sized, text-to-speech converters for the blind. As mentioned, this can be regarded as correct given the 2005 introduction of the [[K-NFB Reader|"Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" (K-NFB Reader)]], though a significant reduction in price would be required by 2009 to reasonably classify the device as "cheap"--one quality Kurzweil claimed they would possess.
Kurzweil's pronouncements regarding the state of Warfare in 2009 seem likely to meet mixed success. While the United States remains the world's dominant military power and will almost certainly remain so until 2009, his "prediction" of this reality is not so awe-inspiring given the massive military preponderance the U.S. has historically enjoyed coupled with the extreme unlikelihood of a sudden diminishment of American strength between 1999 and 2009 given the U.S.'s past emphasis on military readiness. Kurzweil instead predicted that most opposing countries in 2009 would focus on challenging the United States' economic as opposed to military strength, and this is already the case today. Kurzweil's claim that warfare in 2009 would be dominated by unmanned combat planes seems unlikely to pan out (though it should be noted that unmanned aircraft have nevertheless advanced considerably since 1999 and are more widely used than ever), as does his more general assessment that humans would be largely absent from the battlefield thanks to fighting machines. One needs to look no farther than Iraq or Afghanistan, where the world's most advanced military is forced to fight infantry-based wars in which even soldiers in "safe" rear-echelon areas are subject to regular attack, to realize that combat remains--at its core--a human endeavor. On that note, Kurzweil's prediction that wars between nations would remain rare in 2009 is so far vindicated by the occurrence of only two such wars since 1999--one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. While numerous conflicts rage elsewhere, Kurzweil was right to foresee that they would primarily pit regular forces against terrorists.
Kurzweil successfully predicted privacy emerging as a political issue ''(see [[Closed-circuit television#Privacy|CCTV: Privacy]])''.
Kurzweil's prediction that portable computers will shrink in size and take on nontraditional physical forms (i.e., very different in design from a laptop or desktop computer) by 2009 is supported by the emergence of devices such as the [[portable media player]]s and advanced cell phones, as well as by newer [[Personal digital assistant|PDA's]]. All meet Kurzweil's aforementioned criteria, being small to the point of wearability, possessing the power and range of function of older computers, and featuring designs that radically depart from normal computers. Kurzweil's forecast that these devices would lack rotating memories was right.
However, his claim that such portable computers will be commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry by 2009 seems unlikely to pass, as does his prediction that people will typically be wearing "at least a dozen" such computers in the same year. Most "portable computers" as they are defined here have built-in keyboards or accessible keyboard functions (such as a digital keyboard that can be manipulated through a touchscreen), putting reality again at odds with Kurzweil's belief that most computers would lack this feature by 2009, with users instead relying on [[Speech recognition|continuous speech recognition (CSR)]] to communicate with their PC's.
Similarly, Kurzweil's claim that, by 2009, "the majority of text" will be created through [[Speech recognition|continuous speech recognition (CSR)]] programs instead of through keyboards and manual typing seems highly unlikely. On that vein, he implied in ''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]]'' that [[Speech recognition|CSR]] software should in fact have already replaced human transcriptionists years before 2009 (i.e., 2007 or earlier) due in part to its projected superiority in understanding speech compared to human listeners. [[Speech recognition|CSR]] is not yet this advanced, and the total replacement of human transcriptionists did not happen, nor is it on the verge of happening.
Not only that, he optimistically stated that houses would have around hundred computers within, yet houses are not yet "Intelligent"; however, this linked into his prediction of domestic robots being around but not mainstream ''(see [[Domestic robots]])''.
Since the publication of ''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]],'' Kurzweil has even tacitly admitted that some of his 2009 predictions will not happen on schedule. For instance, in the book he forecast that [[Virtual retinal display|specialized eyeglasses that beamed computer-generated images onto the retinas of their users to produce an HUD-effect]] would be in wide use by 2009, and that in the same year telephone companies would commonly provide computerized voice translating services, allowing people speaking different languages to understand one another through a phone, yet in a 2006 [[C-SPAN|C-SPAN2]] interview, he stated that these two technologies would not be available until sometime in the 2010s.
''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]]'' features a "Timeline" section at the end, which summarizes both the history of technological advancement and Kurzweil's predictions for the future.<ref>http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0274.html</ref>
===Other Sources===
In an October 2002 article published on [http://www.Kurzweilai.net his website], Kurzweil stated that "[[Deep Fritz]]-like chess programs running on ordinary personal computers will routinely defeat all humans later in this decade."<ref>http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0527.html?printable=1</ref>
[[Deep Fritz]] is a computer chess program--generally considered superior to the older [[IBM Deep Blue|Deep Blue]]--that has defeated or tied a number of human chess masters and opposing chess programs.<ref>http://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_fritz.html</ref> Due to advances in personal computer performance, the [[Deep Fritz]] program can now run on ordinary personal computers, and different versions of it are available for purchase.<ref>http://www.chessbase.com/shop/product.asp?pid=304</ref><ref>http://www.chesscentral.com/software/deep-fritz-8.htm</ref>
While this makes the first part of Kurzweil's prediction true, it is unknown whether the [[Deep Fritz]] programs are currently defeating ALL humans in ALL games played, though considering the impressive professional record of [[Deep Fritz]], it would be reasonable to assume that only the very best human players can beat the program with consistency. -->
== Libri editi ==
* 1999. ''The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence''
* 2004. ''Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever''
* 2005. ''The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.'' ISBN 0-670-03384-7. <!--deals with the fields of [[genetics]], [[nanotech]], [[robotics]], and the rapidly changing definition of humanity.
*''[http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0588.html? The Ray Kurzweil Reader]'': The Ray Kurzweil Reader is a collection of essays by Ray Kurzweil on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, radical life extension, conscious machines, the promise and peril of technology, and other aspects of our future world. These essays, all published on KurzweilAI.net from 2001 to 2003, are now available as a PDF document for convenient downloading and offline reading. The 30 essays, organized in seven memes (such as "How to Build a Brain"), cover subjects ranging from a review of Matrix Reloaded to "The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine" and "Human Body Version 2.0."
*Kurzweil is the co-author (and subject) of the 2002 book ''Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I.''. He wrote the introduction to the 2003 artificial personality book ''Virtual Humans'' and collaborated with the Canadian band [[Our Lady Peace]] for their 2000 album ''[[Spiritual Machines]]''. -->
== Vide ==
== Notae ==
<references/> <!--
==External links==
{{commonscat}}
*[http://www.kurzweiltech.com/ Kurzweil Companies web site]
*[http://www.cio.com/archive/101504/interview.html Machine Dreams] - ''CIO Magazine'' interview
*[http://www.kurzweilai.net/ KurzweilAI.net] - a vast resource, including some of his books for free
*[http://www.asc2004.com/Presentations/01-Monday/06-Kurzweil.pdf Warfighting in the 21st Century - The Remote, Robotic, Robust, Size-Reduced, Virtual Reality Paradigm] - Keynote address, 24th Army Science Conference, [[November 29]] [[2004]]
* [http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=r_kurzweil Ray Kurzweil lecture] at the [[TED Conference]] in Monterey, CA, February 2005. (24 minutes)
*[http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050207/pf/050207-7_pf.html Robot Wars] - news@nature site interview, [[February 8]] [[2005]]
*[http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3714070 The future, just around the bend, The Economist, [[10 March]] [[2005]] (membership required)]
*[http://instapundit.com/archives/025289.php Interview about ''The Singularity is Near''] - ''Instapundit'', [[September 2]] [[2005]]
*[http://www.cfr.org/publication/9431/exponentially_expanding_future_from_exponentially_shrinking_technology.html The Council on Foreign Relations; An Exponentially Expanding Future From Exponentially Shrinking Technology, November 30, 2005]
*[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5067661 Interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday] - [[December 23]] [[2005]]
*[http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v7i01_kurzweil.html Ubiquity interview with Ray Kurzweil, January 2006]
*[http://sss.stanford.edu/ The Singularity Summit at Stanford, May 2006]
*[http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/singularity/clash/ Human v 2.0: Ray Kurzweil vs. Hugo de Garis] [[October 24]] [[2006]]
* [http://www.asc2006.com 25th Annual Army Science Conference] [[November 27]] [[2006]] [http://view.dau.mil/dauvideo/view/eventListing.jhtml;jsessionid=JYHI3HNQ5WOV3AF4VLHSFEQ?eventid=1424&c=81 Web Hosted Presentation], [http://www.asc2006.com/mon/11-kurzweil.pdf Slides], [http://libsing.blogspot.com/2007/04/ray-kurzweil-warfighting-in-21st.html Video]
*[http://web.mit.edu/webcast/csail/2006/mit-csail-kurzweil-32123-30nov2006-220k.ram Debate between Ray Kurzweil and David Gelernter at MIT on November 30, 2006]
*[http://www.androidtech.com/knowledge-blog/2006/12/web-30-bridge-to-singularity.html Web 3.0] - How the next version of the Web will prepare us for the Singularity [[December 11]] [[2006]]
*[http://edge.org/q2007/q07_5.html#kurzweil - The ''Edge'' Annual Question - 2007; What are you Optimistic About? Why?]
*[http://www.podworx.com/GearUP/index.cfm?ShowID=04 Interview with Ray Kurzweil] and [http://www.podworx.com/GearUP/index.cfm?ShowID=06 Sample of Ray Kurzweil keynote] from Interwoven's GearUp Podcast
*[http://www.rayandterry.com/index.php?osCsid=54b79985219c6d12eb469069b45baebb Ray and Terry's Longevity Program]
*[http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=7515&schedID=457 Ray Kurzweil interview on BookTV], 3 hours in length
*[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/index.htm?postversion=2007050209 The smartest futurist on earth - CNN Money article] May 2 2007
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{{Lifetime|1948||Kurzweil, Raimundus}}
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