Quantum redactiones paginae "Raimundus Kurzweil" differant

'''Raimundus Kurzweil''' ([[IPA]]: [kɚz-waɪl]), dictus '''Ray Kurzweil,''' (natus [[Novum Eboracum (urbs)|Novi Eboraci]] die [[21 Februarii]] [[1948]]), est [[inventor]] [[America]]nus qui rebus futuris studet. Aditum praemunivit in campis [[opticalis characterum recognitio|opticali characterum recognitione]] (OCR), [[synthesis vocum|synthesi vocum]], [[technologia voces recognizansagnoscens|technologia voces recognizantiagnoscenti]], et [[instrumentum musicum electronicum|instrumentis musicis electronicis]]. Libros gravissimos de [[artificiali intelligentia]], [[rerum futurarum stuidum|rerum futurarum studio]], [[Singularitas Technologica|Singularitate Technologica]], [[transhumanismum|transhumanismo]], et [[valetudo|valetudine]] scripsit. <!--

InAnno [[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]].

He has also 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 has also 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>

Kurzweil is also 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>

[[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 also irreversibly transforms us.

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 also 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 also correct to estimate that the latter would become practical for widespread use in the early 21st century.

Kurzweil also 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 also 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 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 also 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.

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 also 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 also 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 also 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]] also 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.

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 also 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 also 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 also 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 also 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]])''.

''[[The Age of Spiritual Machines]]'' also 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>

*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 also 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]]''. -->