Ray Kurzweil Quotes - Page 2

As we gradually learn to harness the optimal computing capacity of matter, our intelligence will spread through the universe at (or exceeding) the speed of light, eventually leading to a sublime, universe wide awakening.

In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic.

We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever. Existing knowledge can be aggressively applied to dramatically slow down aging processes so we can still be in vital health when the more radical life-extending therapies from biotechnology and nanotechnology become available. But most baby boomers won't make it because they are unaware of the accelerating aging process in their bodies and the opportunity to intervene.

Nature, and the natural human condition, generates tremendous suffering. We have the means to overcome that, and we should deploy it.

A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.

The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.

Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.

We'll be able to have very intelligent, little robots with computers going inside our bloodstream, keeping us healthy from inside, destroying cancer at the level of one cell.

Emotional intelligence is what humans are good at and that's not a sideshow. That's the cutting edge of human intelligence.

Intuition is linear; our imaginations are weak. Even the brightest of us only extrapolate from what we know now; for the most part, we're afraid to really stretch.

We're democratizing the tools of creativity.

Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see that in a lot of science fiction. But the machines were creating are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our own reach.

The ethical debates are like stones in a stream. The water runs around them. You haven't seen any biological technologies held up for one week by any of these debates.

By the end of this decade, computers will disappear as distinct physical objects, with displays built in our eyeglasses, and electronics woven in our clothing, providing full-immersion visual virtual reality.

When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer and it took up a whole building. The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. What now fits in your pocket 25 years from now will fit into a blood cell and will again be millions of times more cost effective.

By 2010 computers will disappear. They'll be so small, they'll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We'll be interacting with virtual personalities.

The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.

I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

We only have to capture 1/10,000th of the solar energy landing on earth to completely satisfy all our energy needs.

Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.

Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.

By 2009, computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses.

Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by about 2020.

Play is just another version of work