Everybody Loves To Hate Raymond

I’m talk­ing about Kurzweil.  Ray­mond Kurzweil.

And when I said every­body, I actu­ally meant me, myself and I.

But then, I sat down and thought about it some more, and found it fair to throw in a cou­ple of neu­ro­sci­en­tists, a dozen or more engi­neers, a spat­ter­ing of anti-technology activists, and a hun­dred or more reli­gious zealots.  Not to for­get, Bill Joy.

Who Is Ray­mond Kurzweil And Why Do So Many Folks Dis­like Him?

Well, for starters, I don’t dis­like him, nor do I hate him (nei­ther do many of those nice folks above I tried to frame).  Quite the oppo­site actu­ally — I’m in awe of him.

And I’m usu­ally very envi­ous of peo­ple I’m in awe of.  That’s when my nog­gin’ tricks me into believ­ing that I hate them, when really, all I want to do is to walk in their shoes.  Those are some big shoes to fill, I know, but it’s just for a day.

Just for a day, to feel what it’s like to walk in the shoes of some of the bright­est peo­ple on the planet today.  For that’s who poly­math inven­tor Ray­mond Kurzweil is – one of the bright­est peo­ple on the planet today.

At an age when most boys were bury­ing their heads in Archie comics, Ray Kurzweil had already devel­oped a soft­ware pro­gram which IBM them­selves dis­trib­uted.  Kurzweil was 12 then.

At 60, Kurzweil is con­tin­u­ing to push the bound­aries of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion.  The trail of inven­tions he has left behind is mind-jarring.

From his Read­ing Machine for the blind, to his syn­the­siz­ers used by music leg­ends like Her­bie Han­cock and Ste­vie Won­der, Kurzweil has caught the atten­tion of the unini­ti­ated to the sophis­ti­ca­tion of mod­ern tech­nol­ogy – win­ning the National Medal of Tech­nol­ogy in the process.

The Sin­gu­lar­ity Is Near

Today, like Pro­teus ris­ing from the sea, Ray Kurzweil is adored as a pal­adin of nan­otech­nol­ogy and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.  Observed to be a genius with a vatic fer­vor and armed with his Law of Accel­er­at­ing Returns, he has been able to pre­dict tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs with pro­pi­tious results.

One such pre­dic­tion is that by the 2020s, we will all be strolling along with bil­lions of nanobots (non­bi­o­log­i­cal copies of the human brain) plugged into our brains, a tran­shu­man­ism Kurzweil calls Sin­gu­lar­ity.

The reper­cus­sions of that tak­ing place are ter­ri­fy­ing.  Just imag­ine the SATs being scraped from the edu­ca­tional sys­tem to be replaced by the Tur­ing Test! — Ok, saw what I did there, I just made a sci­en­tific jape (Hey! Save your toma­toes for a rainy day with them food short­ages and all!).

Any­ways, Sin­gu­lar­ity, as Kurzweil defines it in an inter­view with Glenn Reynolds is:

“a future period dur­ing which the pace of tech­no­log­i­cal change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irre­versibly transformed.”

Now, from where I’m sit­ting, that sounds like some scary sci-fi shit.  Human life will be irre­versibly trans­formed?  Is that even some­thing to look for­ward to?  Are we try­ing to save the planet for this?  My first con­cern and I don’t mean to sound like a total tool when I ask — is this going to affect me mak­ing the beast with two backs, as the Bard used to say?

Putting friv­o­lous anx­i­eties aside for the moment, let’s perch our­selves atop a balustrade and gaze into Kurzweil’s pre­emp­tory ora­cle from the per­spec­tive of an entre­pre­neur.  The future is Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy and there would hardly be a field that wouldn’t be rev­o­lu­tion­ized by it.  That is the claim of Kurzweil and it’s hardly shock­ing news, since we’re already liv­ing that future right now.

There Can Be No Sin­gu­lar­ity With­out Nanotechnology

But, it’s the biol­ogy of busi­ness that should be pok­ing us in our spleen and giv­ing us that lump in our throat.

What’s so damn inter­est­ing about the biol­ogy of busi­ness?  Well, accord­ing to Sandeep Malhotra:

“Liv­ing or non­liv­ing, we are all nanosys­tems. We are all com­posed of the same matter.”

And nan­otech­nol­ogy as Kurzweil has rightly pre­dicted, is what the British would say, “the bee’s knees.”  It’s where the hid­den gold is.  And this could be attrib­uted to the even­tual col­lapse of Moore’s Law — applic­a­ble mainly to silicon-based com­puter tech­nol­ogy.  But, more than any­thing else, it’s Kurzweil’s vision of a more sophis­ti­cated advance­ment of the human species that has dis­rupted the sym­bio­sis of the busi­ness world.

By reverse engi­neer­ing the human brain, Kurzweil hopes to engi­neer nanobots to enhance the every­day func­tion­al­i­ties of us humans.  We’re talk­ing com­pu­ta­tional sys­tems that oper­ate at more than 10 mil­lion times the speed of elec­tro­chem­i­cal processes in the human brain.

In other words, choos­ing to be stu­pid can no longer become a lifestyle choice.  All humans will have access to supe­rior intel­li­gence sim­ply by hav­ing these nanobots implanted in our brains.

Cell­phones might also become redun­dant if, Kurzweil’s vision of the future mate­ri­al­izes.  Rea­son being, we’ll all pos­sess the abil­ity to inter­act in a vir­tual envi­ron­ment at a loca­tion of our choice.  Mean­ing, your girl­friend could be in Paris and you in New York, but you’ll be able to meet in Sey­chelles vir­tu­ally in sec­onds for a bit of snog­ging if you so choose.

Geez, come to think of it, this “human life will be irre­versibly trans­formed” din­gus ain’t as bad as it sounds.

If you’re excited as I am now about what Kurzweil’s future has in store for you, then the good news is, we’re already inter­act­ing with nan­otech­nol­ogy in every­day items like fuel cells, golf balls, car trim­mings and ten­nis racquets.

The rush to get nan­otech­nol­ogy to the mar­ket­place isn’t out of neces­sity, though.

Rather, its com­mer­cial via­bil­ity is quickly com­ing into focus.  If you’re gun­ning for new invest­ment and busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties, it’ll be worth your time to peek into this sec­tor.  The Rus­sians are already plumb­ing it for all its worth.  And we all know how intu­itive these Rus­sians are where tech­nol­ogy is concerned.

If you’re inter­ested in what the Joint Eco­nomic Com­mit­tee of the United States Con­gress has to say about nan­otech­nol­ogy, then you might want to read their report – The Future Is Com­ing Sooner Than You Think.

Every­body Might Love Ray­mond Afterall

His­tory is lit­tered with bril­liant minds and inno­va­tors who have sur­prised our fore­fa­thers with inven­tions that have ulti­mately paved the high-tech road we’re stand­ing on today.  One such lumi­nary that imme­di­ately springs to mind is one of America’s most beloved inven­tors — Thomas Edison.

Few have heard of Fra Luca Paci­oli, the inven­tor of double-entry book-keeping; but he has prob­a­bly had much more influ­ence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo.

- Uses of the Past (1957) ch. 8

So, may I be so bold as to sug­gest that it’ll only be a mat­ter of time before Amer­ica speaks about Ray­mond Kurzweil in the same breath.  The men­sch may have his crit­ics, but which man with a chimeri­cal vision of the future doesn’t.

Oh, by the way, here are your shoes back, Mr. Kurzweil.  I think I’ll just stick to lan­guish­ing in idle rumi­na­tions while play­ing the role of third-party impri­matur as I await your future to unfold, thank you very much.

Your Moti­va­tional Proverb For Today — Crowded ele­va­tor smell dif­fer­ent to midget.

Tagged as: nanobots, nanotechnology, Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near