Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Jim Moldenhauer Inventor, entrepreneur, author and futurist, Ray Kurzweil, was the keynote speaker at this year's Founders Day Sesquicentennial Finale on Thursday afternoon at Braden Auditorium in the Bone Student Center.

ISU celebrated Founders Day 2008 and the Sesquicentennial finale with a presentation by futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil.

Kurzweil discussed topics of health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, technological singularity and futurism. "This is a critical point in our history because of the exponential progression of progress, which is something I have studied for over 30 years," Kurzweil said.

An exponential progression is one in which each point relates exponentially to the next. Kurzweil is known in his field for his ability to predict trends of the future. His first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was written in the late 1980's and has been acclaimed for its remarkably accurate predictions about the 1990's and early 2000's. "Technology is remarkably predictable," Kurzweil said.

Kurzweil discussed technology he foresees for the future including people experiencing 3-D virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas, computers embedded everywhere including furniture, clothes, and in the human body and glasses that could block out the "real" world entirely and fully immerse the user in a virtual reality environment Kurzweil also discussed the future of the health care industry and the human body. "We have the ability to treat our biology as a set software processes, information processes. We now have the means to update the software of our bodies," Kurzweil said. Along with discussing the positive attributes this technology will bring, Kurzweil also acknowledged the negative aspects.

"Technology does amplify both promise and peril. We need to really deploy our resources to protecting ourselves from the peril, and to have proper ethical guidelines," Kurzweil said. "We have the ability to overcome pressing problems in the world like poverty and environmental issues. We need to apply these technologies to overcome these pressing human needs," Kurzweil added.

Continued...

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