the heir to edison

last night a few of us went to see ray kurzweil speak.  i had never heard of him before my technology theory class, but this guy is fascinating...super smart and a bit crazy...the perfect combination for an IT mastermind!

kurzweil is most known for his inventions in the optical recognition field (technology's ability to read text and font), which include the first flatbed scanner and text-to-speech synthesizer [a major breakthrough for the technologies that aid the blind!].  he went even further in the 1980's and created a speech-to-text program that allows computers to transcribe the spoken word [incredible].

his father was a musican in vienna, austria before the family fled to america during WWII, so kurzweil talked about his appreciation for music.  this led to his invention of the piano synthesizer that can mimic the sound of a grand piano [think about the casio keyboards from our childhood...on crack].  but the interesting thing is that all of these technologies seem so common place because they have been around for awhile and we take them for granted.  but the initial conception and invention of them was considered insane, if not impossible, at the time that kurweil introduced them...which makes you wonder about the types of technologies that are in our near-future.  the ones that we all think are "crazy" but will soon become commonplace.

he talked about a lot of geeky-awesome things [which gets us technology students all excited] like moore's law, transhumanism, artifical technology, and nanotechnology [crazy, yet possible, ideas that make the movie, the matrix, look normal].  he is currently working on "reverse engineering the brain" [i kid you not] and believes in microscopic technologies that will be ingested into our bodies to help us regulate and heal our bodies leading to much longer lives, even immortality [yeah, this one takes a bit of time to wrap your head around].  he talks about the ability to download your brain...memories, thoughts, emotions...onto a computer by the year 2020.  no wonder he has been called "the rightful heir to thomas edison."

i couldn't take pictures inside and it was raining, so i just snapped this photo outside of the auditorim showing all of the students pouring into the building, excited for kurzweil's talk...i haven't been to a just-for-fun lecture in a long time, and it was so exciting to just listen and learn...especially to a technology legend.