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MIT's Marvin Minsky writes that "with his brilliant descriptions of the coming connections of computers with immortality, Kurzweil clearly takes his place as a leading futurist of our time." George Gilder writes that "Kurzweil's ideas make all other roads to the computer future look like goat paths in Patagonia." Sun Microsystems Chief Scientist Bill Joy, whose own discussions of the promise and peril of technology have attracted worldwide attention, writes in his now famous Wired magazine cover story that "I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things." Stevie Wonder writes "Ray's technology and ideas have truly been among the sunshines of my life. Kurzweil's writings are a wonderful riff on the next century from a keen seer, a great inventor and a good friend."
Kurzweil's national best-selling book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, received widespread acclaim. It achieved the #1 status on Amazon in the categories of both science and artificial intelligence and has been published in nine languages. The New York Times writes, "Kurzweil's latest book ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers, quantum computers, Godel's theorem, neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test, brain scanning, the slowness of neurons, chess playing programs, the Internet - the whole world of information technology past, present, and future. Kurzweil's writings are for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next." Wired magazine writes, "Ray Kurzweil has a knack for spotting the next new thing. He has been charging into the future for nearly 40 years. He's best known for guerrilla assaults on conventional wisdom." John Casti of Nature describes Kurzweil's latest book as a "mind expanding account of the rise of intelligent machines. . . .nothing less than a blueprint for how to shove Homo sapiens off centre-stage in evolution's endless play. . . .If you buy into Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns - and all empirical evidence currently available supports it completely - then the replacement of humans by machines as the primary intellectual force on Earth is indeed imminent."
Ray Kurzweil is widely regarded as one of the leading inventors of our time. TIME Magazine writes, "Kurzweil's eclectic career and propensity of combining science with practical - often humanitarian - applications have inspired comparisons with Thomas Edison." Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition (OCR), the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed, large-vocabulary speech recognition. These technologies continue today as market leaders in their respective industries, industries that Ray Kurzweil pioneered. Kurzweil has successfully founded and developed nine companies in OCR, music synthesis, speech recognition, reading technology, virtual reality, financial investment, medical simulation and cybernetic art. Kurzweil's web site, KurzweilAI.net, is a leading resource on artificial intelligence, with more than 100,000 readers.
Ray Kurzweil received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the nation's largest award in invention and innovation, and in 2002 was inducted into the National Inventor Hall of Fame. He also received the 1999 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. He has also received scores of other national and international 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 MIT and the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. He has received thirteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. He has received seven national and international film awards.
Kurzweil is a widely sought speaker and has given keynote presentations at many leading venues, including PC Expo, Business Week, The Council on Foreign Relations, SIGGRAPH, Cowen, TED, ICASSP, the American Psychiatric Association, Agenda, and many others. His presentations to diverse audiences combine wit and keen insight into contemporary issues of technology and its impact on society. His lectures often include appearances by "Ramona," his "virtual female alter ego", and other engaging demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies that Kurzweil and his teams have developed.
Kurzweil has written five books, four of which have been national best sellers and hundreds of articles. In the year 2001, there were over 200 articles by or about Ray Kurzweil in leading publications, including most major national magazines. His first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was named Best Computer Science Book of 1990. This book, written in the late 1980s, has been acclaimed for its remarkably accurate predictions about the 1990s and early 2000s. His most recent book, The Singularity Is Near, (published in 2003) was a New York Times best seller, and has been the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy.
Programs:
Mr. Kurzweil is best known for presenting a thought provoking, long-term, big picture view of the future of technology and its implications for society; explaining the exponential growth of technology (what he calls "The Law of Accelerating Returns") and its path towards reverse engineering the brain, nanotechnology, the merging of human and machine, and ultimately extreme human life extension.
He also presents to business groups, entrepreneurs and inventors about business and technology trends, near-term predictions and long-term predictions, business planning and investing in an age of exponential technological growth.
Sample Topics and Titles from Ray Kurzweil's Keynote Speeches:
On the Future:
Early in the Twenty-First Century, Intelligence will Underlie Everything of Value
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Business, the Economy, and Society
The Accelerating Impact of Exponentially Expanding Complex Systems
The Emergence and Impact of Intelligent Machines
An Exponentially Expanding Future from Exponentially Shrinking Technology
The Web Within Us: When Minds and Machines Become One
Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capable AI Within a Quarter Century
The Law of Accelerating Returns and the 21st Century
Health/Longevity:
Reprogramming Biology: The New Paradigm
A Bridge to a Bridge to a Bridge...to Immortality
How to Live Long Enough to Live Forever
The Coming Merger of Human and Machine: the Radical Expansion of Human Longevity and Intelligence
Reverse Engineering the Human Body and Brain -- The Impact on Human Health and Society
Biotechnology and Nanotechnology: Two Overlapping Health Revolutions
The Impact of 21st Century Technology on Human Health and Society
Innovation & Entrepreneurship:
The Democratization of Innovation in an Era of Accelerating Technologies
How to Manage Innovation in an Era of Accelerating Technologies
Identifying an Opportunity in Technology
Innovation in an Era of Accelerating Technologies
Innovation in the 21st Century
The Power of an Idea
The Social Impact of Technology:
Towards Singularity - it's Nature, Promise, and Dangers
How Far will Technology Transform Humanity?
Promise and Peril - The Deeply Intertwined Poles of 21st Century Technology
Computers and Consciousness
Virtual Reality and the Nature of Identity
Are We Spiritual Machines?
Economic Impact:
The Future of Information Technology as it Asymptotes to 100% of the Value of Products and Services
Exponentially Growing Ventures from Exponentially Shrinking Technology
The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Business, the Economy, and Society
The Forces of Deflation: Why We Don't Need High Interest Rates to Counter Inflation A Confluence of Exponential Trends
21st Century Technology and the Capital Markets
Education:
The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Education, Training, and Performance
The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Higher Education and Society
Disabilities and Assistive Technologies:
The End of Handicaps
Disabilities and Technology in the 21st Century
The Future of Blindness and Disabilities in an Age of Accelerating Technology
Disabilities and Blindness Technology in the 21st Century
Technology, Neuroscience and the Future of Cognitive Disabilities
The Future of Special Education in an Era of Accelerating Technology
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