http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/opinions\/2009\/12\/13\/2009-12-13_top_futurist_ray_kurzweil_predicts_how_technology_will_change_humanity_by_2020.html<\/a><\/p>\nAs we approach the end of the first decade of the new millennium, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s consider what life will be like a decade hence. Changes in our lives from technology are moving faster and faster. The telephone took 50 years to reach a quarter of the U.S. population. Search engines, social networks and blogs have done that in just a few years time. Consider that Facebook started as a way for Harvard students to meet each other just six years ago; it now has 350 million users and counting.<\/p>\n
Between now and 2020, the trend will continue, spreading cutting-edge technologies to every corner of the country and beginning to make innovations once consigned to the realm of science fiction real for millions of Americans. Specifically what can we expect? Solar power on steroids, longer lives, the chance to get rid of obesity once and for all, and portable computing devices that start becoming part of your body rather than being held in your hand.<\/p>\n
What will drive all this accelerating change is precisely what has driven it\u00c2\u00a0this past half-century: the exponential growth in the power of information\u00c2\u00a0technology, which approximately doubles for the same cost every year. When I\u00c2\u00a0was an MIT undergraduate in 1965, we all shared a computer that took up half\u00c2\u00a0a building and cost tens of millions of dollars. The computer in my pocket\u00c2\u00a0today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0a billion-fold increase in the amount of computation per dollar since I was\u00c2\u00a0a student.<\/p>\n
That incredible force — information technology that moves faster, then\u00c2\u00a0faster, then faster still — will power changes in every imaginable realm\u00c2\u00a0over the next decade.<\/p>\n
Start with the basics. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve no doubt noticed that electronic gadgets are\u00c2\u00a0getting smaller and smaller; the iPod Shuffle holds 1,000 songs and weighs\u00c2\u00a00.38 ounces. Your phone is smaller than it was a few years ago and can do\u00c2\u00a0much more. By 2020, memory devices will be integrated into our clothing. And\u00c2\u00a0the very idea of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153smart phone\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will begin to change. Rather than looking\u00c2\u00a0at a tiny screen, our glasses will beam images directly to our retinas,\u00c2\u00a0creating a high resolution virtual display that hovers in air.<\/p>\n
That virtual display will be able to take over our entire visual field of\u00c2\u00a0view, putting us in a three-dimensional full immersion virtual reality\u00c2\u00a0environment. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll watch movies virtually and read virtual books. A lot of\u00c2\u00a0our personal and business meetings will take place in these 3D virtual\u00c2\u00a0worlds. The design of new virtual environments will be an art form. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll\u00c2\u00a0even have ways to touch one another virtually.<\/p>\n
There are already beginning to be apps available for your iPhone or Android\u00c2\u00a0phone that allow you to look at a building and have the display superimpose\u00c2\u00a0what stores are inside it; Google Goggles, released last week, is the first\u00c2\u00a0free, widely-available version of such software. By 2020 we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll routinely\u00c2\u00a0have pop ups in our visual field of view that give us background about the\u00c2\u00a0people and places that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re looking at.<\/p>\n
In other words, your memory will be constantly, instantaneously aided by the\u00c2\u00a0information available on the Internet. The two will begin to become\u00c2\u00a0indistinguishable.<\/p>\n
How about energy? That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sound like an information technology. Fossil\u00c2\u00a0fuels, after all, are an early first industrial revolution, 19th century\u00c2\u00a0technology. But we are now applying nanotechnology — the science of\u00c2\u00a0essentially reprogramming matter at the level of molecules to create new\u00c2\u00a0materials and devices — to the design of renewable energy technologies such\u00c2\u00a0as solar energy. As a result, the cost per watt of solar energy is coming\u00c2\u00a0down rapidly and the total amount of solar energy is growing exponentially.<\/p>\n
It has in fact been doubling every two years for the past\u00c2\u00a0 20 years and is\u00c2\u00a0now only eight doublings away from meeting all of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s energy needs.<\/p>\n
When I shared this fact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a few\u00c2\u00a0weeks ago, he asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but is there enough sunlight to double solar energy\u00c2\u00a0eight more times?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I responded that we have 10,000 times more sunlight than\u00c2\u00a0we need to do this. The prime minister announced an Israeli energy\u00c2\u00a0initiative the next day at the Israeli Presidential Conference based on our\u00c2\u00a0conversation, setting a 10-year goal to create the technologies to\u00c2\u00a0completely replace fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just the gadgets we carry around and the power we use to fuel our\u00c2\u00a0lives that are subject to what I call \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the law of accelerating returns.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Health and medicine, which used to be a hit or miss process, has now become\u00c2\u00a0an information technology.<\/p>\n
We now have the software of life (our genes) and the means of upgrading that\u00c2\u00a0software. How long do you go without updating the software on your cell\u00c2\u00a0phone? Not long: it does it itself every few days or weeks. Yet we are\u00c2\u00a0walking around with obsolete software in our bodies that evolved thousands\u00c2\u00a0of years ago. Within 10 years, that will change.<\/p>\n
Already today, there are over a thousand projects to change our genes away\u00c2\u00a0from disease and toward health, not just in newborns but in mature\u00c2\u00a0individuals. The Human Genome Project, which has catalogued our genetic\u00c2\u00a0material, was itself a very good example of the law of accelerating returns;\u00c2\u00a0the amount of genetic data that is sequenced has doubled every year and the\u00c2\u00a0cost has come down by half every year. We can now design health\u00c2\u00a0interventions on computers and test them out on biological simulators. These\u00c2\u00a0technologies are doubling in power every year and will be a thousand times\u00c2\u00a0more powerful in a decade.<\/p>\n
By 2020, we will have the means to program our biology away from disease and\u00c2\u00a0aging, and toward significant advances in our ability to treat major\u00c2\u00a0diseases such as heart disease and cancer — an approach that will be fully\u00c2\u00a0mature by 2030.<\/p>\n
We won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just be able to lengthen our lives; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be able to improve our\u00c2\u00a0lifestyles. By 2020, we will be testing drugs that will turn off the fat\u00c2\u00a0insulin receptor gene that tells our fat cells to hold on to every calorie.<\/p>\n
Holding on to every calorie was a good idea thousands of years ago when our\u00c2\u00a0genes evolved in the first place. Today it underlies an epidemic of obesity.<\/p>\n
By 2030, we will have made major strides in our ability to remain alive and\u00c2\u00a0healthy — and young — for very long periods of time. At that time, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll\u00c2\u00a0be adding more than a year every year to our remaining life expectancy, so\u00c2\u00a0the sands of time will start running in instead of running out.<\/p>\n
No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to be an entirely brave new world. Some things will look\u00c2\u00a0pretty similar in 2020. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll still drive cars — although they will have\u00c2\u00a0the intelligence to avoid many accidents and self-driving cars will at least\u00c2\u00a0be experimented with. All-electric cars will be popular. And in cities,\u00c2\u00a0don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect subways or buses to go away.<\/p>\n
But in more and more ways big and small, hang in there and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll all get to\u00c2\u00a0see the remarkable century ahead.<\/p>\n
………….<\/p>\n
Kurzweil is former recipient of the MIT-Lemelson prize, the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest\u00c2\u00a0for innovation, and in 1999 was awarded the National Medal of Technology. He\u00c2\u00a0is the author of the books \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Singularity is Near\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Age of\u00c2\u00a0Spiritual Machines.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
…………<\/p>\n
NHNE Singularity Resource Page:
\nhttp:\/\/www.nhne.org\/tabid\/488\/Default.aspx<\/p>\n
Singularity University:
\nhttp:\/\/singularityu.org\/<\/p>\n
NHNE Ray Kurzweil Resource Page:
\nhttp:\/\/www.nhne.org\/tabid\/498\/Default.aspx<\/p>\n
Kurzweil New Book: “Transcend: Nine Steps To Living Well Forever”
\nhttp:\/\/bit.ly\/b8mFP<\/p>\n
Transcendent Man (movie):<\/p>\n
Home Page<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n