If you haven't ever heard Ray Kurzweil speak about technology and the future, you should. He is the chief futurist and director of engineering at Google Research. Regardless of whether you agree or not, or perhaps even fear his predictions, he speaks of a radically different future which will quickly be upon us and change our lives, our children and grandchildren, education, and so much more. Years ago at one of the first ed tech conferences I had the opportunity to attend I was able to hear him speak in person. He has a proven track record of making accurate predictions about the future, successfully foretelling many of the technological advances we have experienced over the past few decades. A few weeks ago he spoke at SXSW, and although I was not able to be there in person to hear him, I found the recording of it fascinating and would encourage you to watch it. The video embedded above is actually a pre-interview before his presentation at SXSW. More on both talks with the recordings can be found here.
Despite statements from people like Elon Musk saying that the "single biggest threat to our future is not nuclear weapons but artificial intelligence," Ray Kurzweil says he is an optimist. He explains that technology is making things better: worldwide, poverty and crime are down. Advances in medicine are greatly improving the health and life expectancy of people. He explains that we tend to focus on the negative because technology and communication allow us to learn of bad news instantaneously--he said a century ago we would have never heard of something, 50 years ago we would have read about it the newspaper days after it happened, and now we can watch things happen worldwide in real time. He also mentioned that as humans, evolutionarily we are in tune to be defensive and on alert for bad things, which is another reason we are so aware of many negative news headlines despite evidence that things aren't as bad as they used to be.
Regarding technology, Ray points out that the cell phones now in the pockets of teenagers in Africa have the equivalent of what would have been trillions of dollars of communication and computer technology in the 1960s, billions of dollars worth in the 1980s, and millions of dollars worth just a few years ago. He states that technology is a tool, extending our reach and our intelligence and states that cell phones as "brain extenders." He stated that "years ago we need tools to reach the fruit at the top of the tree, now technology is used to extend our intelligence and our what’s possible." Technology is accelerating ideas that are--and will--transform the world.
Some of Kurzweil's current predictions mentioned in this interview include:
Some of Kurzweil's current predictions mentioned in this interview include:
- Printing off 3-D clothing is coming in the early 2020s as printers get better and will be able to print out items smaller than threads.
- Vertical hydroponic farming in urban areas will be widely used. In vitro fertilization for cloning meat tissues for food will transform farming and the food industry.
- A real wave of transformative AR and VR experiences and use will begin in a few years. Kurzweil explained that with many technologies, the first wave seems promising and generates excitement, but then disappoints, much as AR and VR initially did. Things are getting better behind the scenes and exponentially improving and will really be transformative in a few years.
- Augmented intelligence is coming...if you know about Kurzweil and any of his past work, such as his book The Singularity is Near, you know that he believes in a coming merge between humans and machines. In this interview, he explains that we will have a synthetic neocortex in the cloud connected to our brain, nano technology will enable medical technologies to extend our life span and greatly improve our immune system and replace/print off new body parts. He is predicting this to happen around 2050. For more on this, take a look at Kurzweil's AI Website.
These are just a few of his predictions. It's hard to comprehend exponential change and realize just how soon many of these things are coming and will transform life as we know it! Check out some related posts below:
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