IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013 - 5

Augmentation
and Transcendence

nventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is the author
of seven books, including The Age of Spiritual
Machines and most recently How to Create a
Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed.
His theories related to transhumanism, life extension,
and technological singularity have provoked debate.
As an inventor, the website kurzweilai.net notes
that Kurzweil was the principal inventor of the first
CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading
machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments,
and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary
speech recognition.
Mr. Kurzweil was appointed Director of Engineering at Google, Inc., in December 2012.
We interviewed Mr. Kurzweil via email in
summer 2012.
T&S: Many aspects of the future you envision in your
books seem both amazing and fantastic. With all the tremendous change we have to look forward to - how do
we as individuals adapt in basic ways? For example, how
do you suggest engineers, particularly those who today
are students -think about or approach their future work?
RK: I would point out that the public adapts to
new technologies remarkably quickly. Before they
are introduced, they seem fantastic. After they are
introduced, we accept them as part of everyday reality. Consider that four years ago, most people didn't
use social networks, Wikis (such as Wikipedia), and
blogs. Ten years ago most people didn't use search
engines. Now that really sounds like ancient history.
Although the world is being shaped by technology,
that does not mean that everyone should become an
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2013.2247723
Date of publication: 14 March 2013

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SPRING 2013

Bill Wadman

T&S INTERVIEW

RAY KURZWEIL

engineer. The old advice about people following their
passion still holds true. However, people do need to
become technically literate. For example, I recently
spoke to a music convention, a library convention, and
a graphic arts conference. The music convention was
dominated by computerized music technology that was
extremely sophisticated. The library convention was all
about computerized access to information, databases,
and so on. The graphic arts conference was all about
computerized tools that empower the graphic artist.
If one is studying to be a scientist or engineer, the
emphasis should be on basic principles, on the mathematics underlying the field, and projects to actually
solve problems within that discipline. Specific techniques, such as learning current computer languages,
will have a very limited utility. We need to give students the ability to keep learning and to apply learning to real world problems.
T&S: Can you tell us, by what means do you believe
people will be connected to the Internet in 2020?
Some have proposed microchip implants will play a
role, or at least some form of nanotechnology. Others
have spoken of the brain-computer interface, while
still others like Peter Cochrane (1998) have described
thought-to-thought communication style capabilities.
RK: By 2020, we will move beyond just interacting
with devices the way we do today. Our "screen" will be
the same visual world that we look out on, overlaid with
augmented reality using our eyeglasses or lenses. These
devices will also provide full immersion visual virtual
reality. We will have similar devices for the auditory
sense. There will be devices that provide at least some
aspects of the tactile sense so that you can hug or kiss
someone from afar. We will provide input by gesturing,
by talking. We'll still be using the QWERTY keyboard
although many of them will be virtual.
There will be some computers that have gone inside
the body, but this will not be mainstream by 2020.
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http://www.kurzweilai.net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013