People: Ray Kurzweil

Singularity University’s inaugural Graduate Studies Program was such a success last year that they’ve decided to double the class size. That’s an understandable trend for an institution that hopes to educate entrepreneurs and leaders about the possibilities of exponential growth and accelerating technologies. Now, 80 students will be trek out to NASA’s AMES campus in Silicon Valley from June 19th to August 28th to experience cutting edge lectures, workshops, tours of nearby labs, a Zero-G suborbital flight, and sneak peeks at NASA technology. Those interested can sign up through March 15 at the SU website...

Blio e-reader software, announced at CES, was demonstrated by Microsoft executives Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach in the opening keynote address for CES 2010.

At CES today, knfb Reading Technology Inc. unveiled the free Blio eReader, the first to preserve the image-rich format of books and magazines, including their layout, typesetting, images, color and graphics, while also supporting full media functionality, including video, graphics, and web links.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called Ray Kurzweil "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence." In a book published in 1998, Kurzweil prognosticated the future we would see in 2009. Here are some of his hits and misses.

As we approach the end of the first decade of the new millennium, let’s 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.

Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres at the recent Israeli Presidential Conference: Facing Tomorrow 2009, Ray Kurzweil proposed several innovations for dealing with the coming energy shortages and bolstering Israel's growing economy.

24 videos from the Singularity Summit 2009, includes talks by Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, and other Singularity notables.

BY 2040 YOU WILL BE ABLE TO UPLOAD YOUR BRAIN... or at least that's what Ray Kurzweil thinks. He has spent his life inventing machines that help people, from the blind to dyslexics. Now, he believes we're on the brink of a new age -- the 'singularity' -- when mind-boggling technology will allow us to email each other toast, run as fast as Usain Bolt (for 15 minutes) -- and even live forever. Is there sense to his science -- or is the man who reasons that one day he'll bring his dad back from the grave just a mad professor peddling a nightmare vision of the future?

Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.

At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people -- from experts in their field, academics and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook blog in our "Connecting with...." series. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, futurist and author of several books who's been called a "restless genius" and "the ultimate thinking machine."