What if it were possible to live forever?
Some renowned futurists think technology will soon allow humans to transcend biology
When Ray Kurzweil was 15 years old, he created a pattern-recognition software program that allowed a computer to replicate the work of classical composers. When he appeared on the CBS show I’ve Got a Secret in 1965, contestants thought the computer-generated piece was composed by a human.
After his TV appearance, Kurzweil went on to invent several world-changing technologies, such as the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the infamous Kurzweil K250 music synthesizer, among others.
But what Kurzweil is most known for is his ideas on the Singularity. In his New York Times best-selling book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, he predicts a future wrought by what he calls the law of accelerating returns, which posits that technologies like computers, genetics and robotics are increasing exponentially. His ideas project a future in which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and where human biology is done away in favor of genetic alterations, nanotechnology and AI.
“The intelligence that will emerge will continue to represent the human civilization, which is already a human-machine civilization. In other words, future machines will be human, even if they are not biological. This will be the next step in evolution, the next high-level paradigm shift, the next level of indirection.” — Ray Kurzweil
His ideas may sound far-fetched, but with cellphones and laptops a part of our daily lives, and with the commercialization of virtual reality and 3-D printing, are his predictions really that far off?
