When the Singularity get in in 2045,Ray Kurzweilwill finally be infallible . Until , then , however the illustrious futurist ’s meat mind has made some ridiculously inaccurate prediction , as Newsweek magazine point out recently . Kurzweil has place an angry missive to the powder store , to try on and clear up his name .
The Newsweek article is mostly pretty respectful and contains gobs of information — I did n’t know that Kurzweil had formulate the flat - seam scanner and was protagonist with Stevie Wonder — but it does cite criticPZ Myers , who basically says Kurzweil is a bit of a kook . And then they go back and test the excellently affirmative futurist ’s predictions against world , and the results are not so good :
[ W]hen you go back and check Kurzweil ’s previous books , you witness that many of his anticipation sour out to be incorrect - not just a little bit wrong , but wildly , ludicrously unseasonable . During the height of the dotcom boom in 1998 , Kurzweil predicted that the thriftiness would keep on booming right on through 2009 ( and on to 2019 , for that topic ) and that one U.S. company ( he did n’t say which ) would have a food market capitalization of more than $ 1 trillion . Not even near . Kurzweil also predict - ed that by 2009 a top supercomputer would be open of perform 20 quadrillion operations per 2nd ( 20 petaflops in computer jargon ) , the same as the human brain . In fact , the top supercomputer just break the one - petaflop mark - though Kurzweil says he consider all of Google to be a elephantine supercomputer and that it is , indeed , up to of performing 20 petaflops . Kurzweil also anticipate that by now our cars would be able to drive themselves by communicating with sound detector embedded in main road , and that speech acknowledgment would be in far-flung consumption . Neither has happened , but he insists they ’re both correct around the corner . ( “ I was off by a few years , ” he says . )
And accord to Newsweek , a New York screening of the Kurzweil documentary Transcendant Man turn a bit contentious :
As for fears that computers will kill us , or keep us as slaves , Kurzweil insist the reckoner will want us around .
Kurzweil took some serious heat on this last point during a venire discussion after the premiere of Transcendent Man at the Tribeca Film Festival last month . Some leading artificial - intelligence experts were in the audience , and they think we are racing toward a dystopian future . But Kurzweil is possess none of that - he thinks the “ Isle of Man - automobile civilization ” is going to be wonderful . He does n’t argue . He just sits there , smile . Ask him a repoint question and he just dodge it and launch into another monologue . He has no dubiousness . None .
I ca n’t line up it in the online reading , but plain the Newsweek clause includes a sidebar listing all of Kurzweil ’s retiring foretelling , include many that turn out to be wrong . It ’s this sidebar that he takes the most issue with , in hisnew open alphabetic character to Newsweek , which is probably too long for the magazine to publish :
I appreciate your wreak my theme to your readership . However , there are legion inaccuracies and misrepresentation in Daniel Lyons ’ story . For exemplar , of the many accurate predictions for the year 2009 that I wrote in my book The Age of Spiritual Machines , write in the late nineties , only three are listed in the sidebar “ Kurzweil ’s Crystal Ball ” while a larger issue are listed as “ false . ” Of these “ false ” predictions , a number are in fact true , and others are only a few year away . For example , “ Computers will be commonly embedded in clothing and jewellery ” is list as sour . When I compose this prediction , portable computers were big gruelling devices carry under your weapon system . Today they are indeed embedded in shirt pockets , jacket pockets , and give ear from belt ammunition loop . colourful iPod nano models are weary on blouse as jewelry peg , health monitors are weave into unmentionable , there are now computer in get word care , and there are many other examples .
“ Most portable computers will not have keyboard ” is heel as “ False . ” When I wrote this , every portable reckoner had an ( alphameric ) keyboard . Today the majority of portable computers such as MP3 players , camera , phones , game players and many other potpourri do not have keyboard . The full inverted comma of my prognostication prepare it unmortgaged that I am referring to computerized gadget that “ make telephone set calls , get to the web , monitor body affair , allow charge , and allow a variety of other services . ”
One of Kurzweil ’s arguments in his defense : he prefigure the Internet would “ take off ” in the late 1980s , when few citizenry believe that . ( Actually , a spate of college campus and even some high schoolhouse were actively on the net in the late eighties , and you already had web of FTP sites and Gophers and so on . ) On the other hand , computing has come along much quicker than a lot of people would have predicted a couple decades ago — so it ’s not a regretful time to be an unalloyed optimist .
Crap futurismFuturismVirtual Worlds
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