Ray Kurzweil - The Movie - Energy Bulletin

[hatrack]

In "Transcendent Man" it is a sadder than usual Ray Kurzweil who appears on the screen. The 2009 documentary film about Kurzweil, an acclaimed inventor and futurist, shows that the laws of entropy are at work on his body. He undergoes open heart surgery during the course of the film even as he continues to espouse the belief that technological developments over the next 30 years will make human immortality a reality.

To bridge the gap between now and then, the 63-year-old Kurzweil downs 200 pills a day consisting of various herbs, vitamins or other supplements to "reprogram" his body's biochemistry and improve his chances of reaching what he calls the "singularity," a time after which technological change will occur at a pace so fast that the only way we will be able to understand it is to merge with our machines. Humans will at that point become human-machine hybrids.

(It would not matter much what Kurzweil thinks were it not for his globetrotting speaking tours and widely read books that have influenced much of the world's elite who also seem similarly bereft of a suitable education in the relevant sciences. Moreover, his meta message seems to be that we should just sit back and let technological geniuses like him fix every problem including climate change and resource depletion.)

What Kurzweil misses is that humans became human-machine hybrids with the first stone spear tip, and that the results of our marriage with tools have been mixed. Not to worry, Kurzweil tells us in the film, "technology has been the only thing that's enabled us to overcome problems." There's not a hint of recognition that technological solutions have a habit of spawning new problems. There's not a hint of recognition that as we catapult into the digital and biotech ages, we are actually losing basic knowledge about how to interact with the Earth around us in ways not dependent on fragile, hypercomplex industrial systems.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-05/kurzweil-movie

[GliderGuider]

1. Cobb describes everything I object to about Kurzweil's view of life.

As much as I feel sorry for the man personally, I have nothing but contempt for his anti-human position.

"Misguided lunacy" indeed.

[MilesColtrane]

2. I think the article is a bit unfair to Kurzweil.

There's a reason he calls it the Singularity and not Utopia Day.

Just as almost no information comes out of the singularity of a black hole, the merger of humans and machines would produce results that we can't imagine.

Kurzweil simply postulates what could happen, not what will happen.

In "The Singularity is Near", after mentioning the creative potential of augmented human intelligence and biology he writes, "...the Singularity will also amplify the ability to act on our destructive inclinations...".

Those who dismiss him as a nutjob aren't terribly open minded.

[AntiFascist]

3. Another futurist is Dr. Vannevar Bush...

In the 1940s he published a work called "As We May Think" which describes a computer-like memory aid much akin to the way the World Wide Web functions. What Kurzweil imagines as 'The Singularity' may evolve as a group mind linked together through means of telecommunication. All we need is the right software.

[MisterP]

4. a Harold Camping for a new decade!