Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Highway to Hell Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: A guide to all the insane predictions made by =?UTF-8?b?R29vZ2xl4oCZcw==?= new engineering director Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 01:06:10 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Bikers Lines: 46 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 2jY4vgsJFFG3ZVyxHsDOiQ.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: NewsTap/3.5.5 (iPhone/iPod Touch) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.soft-sys.matlab:75503 comp.lang.c++:20094 comp.lang.java.programmer:20678 On Sat, 22 Dec 2012 06:56:19 -0800, Juarez Peace wrote: > Google made a very important hire this past week when it decided to > bring on famed futurist Ray Kurzweil as its new director of engineering. > What makes the hire particularly intriguing is Kurzweil is equal parts > brilliant and insane: He is a pioneer in fields such as speech > recognition technology but he also thinks he will live forever after he > uploads his consciousness onto a computer. If you'd have told a 14th-century peasant that there'd be a huge merchant class in the future who would sit in huge metal cylinders eating meals and drinking wine while the cylinders hurtled through the air faster than a speeding arrow across oceans and continents to bring them to far-flung business opportunities, the peasant would have classified you as insane. And he'd have been wrong to the tune of a few gazillion frequent-flyer miles. > By 2010, “computers… will become essentially invisible: woven into > our clothing, embedded in our furniture and environment.” Although the > concept of “wearable” computers has been tossed around quite a bit, > we’re a long way off from a time when Samsung (005930) will be able to > sell its first Galaxy Sweater model. (Page 312) A smartphone in a pocket seems to be close enough. And I saw a home recently with small computerized gadgets inset into the *floor vents*. Cloud-computing-connected TVs and other items are becoming commonplace. > Kurzweil, who is now 64 years old, knows that there’s a chance that his > flesh body (or as he calls it, “Body 1.0″) could die before he gets to > upload his brain into a computer and fly around the world as a swarm of > nanobots. To ensure that he lives long enough to see such technological > marvels, Kurzweil says he takes “250 supplements (pills) a day” and > receives “a half-dozen intravenous therapies each week (basically > nutritional supplements delivered directly into my bloodstream, thereby > bypassing my GI tract).” (page 211) Has he also signed up for cryonics? > While that may sound excessive to you flesh-based humans, it’s also the > price Kurzweil is willing to pay for a far-flung chance at immortality. > So while you may scoff at Kurzweil’s projections right now, he may have > the last laugh when you’re dying in a hospital and he’s whirring about > as a software-based human in Body 2.0. So Google hired Kurzweil. The really interesting question, then, is if anyone's getting consultancies from Eliezer Yudkowsky ...