刚听了一个报告：奇点临近

lmm的翻译：

2008-09-19 00:14:48 lmm@看片一定不要看有毛的哦 小心地放出自己的破烂翻译……
未完哈

预言未来
2010
超级电脑将和人脑有着一样的低能耗。（虽然不如人脑柔韧）
电脑将不会是遥远的物理幻想，而会拥有新异的外形和/或者被镶接在衣服和其他日常用品里面。
Full-immersion audio-visual virtual reality will exist. 完全的虚拟实境将会实现？

21世纪10年代
电脑将会更小并飞速地融入日常生活。
越来越多的计算机设备将被用于小型网络服务，以及资源分享。
将能够在几乎所有的地方使用高质量的宽带连接。
将光影图像投射到视网膜上的眼镜将被改进。它将附带上话筒或者耳机，（complete the experience with sounds. ）完善听觉的感受？
虚拟实境眼镜会内置一个“虚拟助手”程序帮助佩戴者处理繁杂的日常事务。（见Augmented Reality[应该是书名？]）
虚拟助手是一个多面手。一个很有用的功能是将外语逐字地实时翻译成对白字幕显示在佩戴者的眼镜上。
手机可以被镶入衣服，并且能够直接将声音在佩戴者的耳朵里播放。
广告商将有效地使用一项新科技来打广告。即将两束超声波瞄准同一个目标，并在那里交叠。这样可以对一个特定的人传递一个定点的声音信息。这一点在电影《Minority Report》（少数派报告）和《Back to the Future 2》（回到未来2）中有展示。

2014
普及自动房屋清理机器人。

2018
1013比特——大概等同于人脑的记忆空间——的电脑会只值1000美刀。

2020
PC（个人电脑）将会拥有和人脑一样的处理能力。

21世纪20年代
小于100纳米尺寸的电脑将可能实现。
作为第一个实际应用，纳米级计算机将用于医学用途。
高科技的医用纳米级机器人会在患者体内实现精细的脑部扫描。
基于极其精细的大脑扫描，精密的完整人脑计算拟将实现。并且人脑的工作原理将被了解。
在这十年的末尾，纳米级机器人将能够进入血管来“喂养”细胞并提取出废物（尽管很可能不被广泛应用）。他们会废掉人类标准营养摄入模式。

2008-09-20 11:30:16 lmm@看片一定不要看有毛的哦 2020
PC（个人电脑）将会拥有和人脑一样的处理能力。

21世纪20年代
小于100纳米尺寸的电脑将可能实现。
作为第一个实际应用，纳米级计算机将用于医学用途。
高科技的医用纳米级机器人会在患者体内实现精细的脑部扫描。
基于极其精细的大脑扫描，精密的完整人脑计算拟将实现。并且人脑的工作原理将被了解。
在这十年的末尾，纳米级机器人将能够进入血管来“喂养”细胞并提取出废物（尽管很可能不被广泛应用）。他们会废掉人类标准营养摄入模式。
在21世纪20年代晚期，纳米科技的制造业会有宽广的前景，并且从根本上改变经济模式。它能够只用传统生产方法的一小部分资源就快速地制造出各种产品。工业制造真正的消耗仅仅是对制作图纸的下载。
同样在这十年的末端，虚拟实境将具有相当高的质量，使人们很难把它和现实世界区分开来。
传统机制的病原体的威胁会在这十年的最后一段时间被医用纳米级机器人永远的驱散。这种相较任何微生物更加寿命无限、更加智能化、更加多功能的机器人将变得相当的先进。
电脑会在这十年的最后一年（2029）年通过图灵测试，这意味着它已经是一个强大的AI，而且还能像人一样思考（虽然第一台AI更像一个幼稚园学生的等效物）。第一台AI是基于电脑对人脑的模拟——这种科技在之前就已经可能办到了——以及纳米级的大脑扫描。

2025
这很可能是先进的纳米科技粉墨登场的一年。
一些军用UAV和地上的交通工具将100%地由电脑控制。

21世纪30年代
意识上传成为可能。
纳米级机器可以直接地插入大脑并和脑细胞合作来完全地控制传入信号和传出信号。这样，完全的虚拟实境将能够在不需要任何附加设备的情况下实现。传入神经通路可以被封锁，完全地避开“真正”的世界并让使用者得到他希望的实境体验。
脑部纳米级机器人也可以从使用者那里引出情感反应。
通过使用脑部纳米级机器人，记录或者像“experience beamers”（阅历卷轴工？）一样实时脑部转播一个人的日常生活对于在遥远地方的人来说将是可能的。这一点和《Being John Malkovich》（成为约翰•马尔科维奇）中那些人物能够进入马尔科维奇的大脑并通过他的眼睛观察这个世界很相似。
在娱乐方面，人脑中的纳米级机器也可以允许他们极大地扩展自己的认知、记忆和感觉能力，以及直接地与电脑接触，和通过“传心术”与其他人交流。类似于通过无线电网络来扩大自身。
同样的纳米科技应该也允许人们改变大脑中的神经系统，修改人们智慧、记忆和性格的潜在基础。

21世纪40年代
人体3.0（就像Kurzweil对它的称呼）开始出现。它缺乏一个固定、何时的外形但是通过foglet（极微机器人？）一样的纳米技术可以随意改变自身的形状和外表
人们花很多时间在完全的虚拟实境中（Kurzweil引用Matrix（黑客帝国）作为一个很好的例子来说明先进的虚拟实境世界将会是怎么样的。这丝毫不带有反乌托邦的扭曲）
Foglet（极微机器人？）仍然在被使用。

2045年：奇点
1000美刀可以买一个比任何人脑组合都聪明十亿倍的电脑。这意味着普通的和低端的电脑都比任何智商极高但未被“提升”的人聪明N多。
这个奇点发生在AI超过最聪明的人类并且比多数地球上的智能生命都聪明的时候。科技的发展将被机器接管，它们可以以普通人都无法理解地速度极快地思考、活动和交流。机器进入了一个的自我提升循环，同时每一代的AI出现得越来越快。从这个时候，科技将会爆炸式进步。由于在机器的控制下，所以我不能准确地语言。
奇点是一个极端突然、有着世界范围的影响的事件，它会永远的影响人类历史的进程。凶猛的机器造成人性的灭绝是不太可能的（虽然并非不可能），因为机器和人类的巨大差别将不再依赖于cybernetically（有控制的？）提高了的人类和上传了的人类。

后2045年：“唤醒”宇宙
最小的的计算机晶体管的物理底线达到。从这个时候起，计算机只能通过扩大自己的尺寸来提高性能。
因此，AI们使得越来越多的地球物质转化为有机的、支持更多AI运算的必要设施，直到整个地球都成为一个巨大的计算机（但是一些地方仍会被保留作为自然保留）。
在这个时候，唯一可能增加这个智能机器的途径是开始把所有宇宙中的物质转化为大量的相似计算系统。AI们从地球的各个方向被发射出去，摧毁所有的行星、卫星和流星体并重新把它们召集成一个巨大的计算机。实际上，这样通过将所有的无生命的“安静”的东西（石头，灰尘，气体等等）转换为有结构的能支持生命的事物（虽然是人造生命）来“唤醒”了宇宙。
Kurzweil预言机器可以在2099年拥有制造行星尺寸的计算机的能力。这突出了在奇点之后科技将会有怎样巨大的进步。
“唤醒”宇宙的过程将最早在2199年完成，否则将花费数十亿年。这由机器们能否找到一个方法来做超光速星际旅行所决定。
在整个宇宙都成为一个巨大的，搞笑的超级计算机后。AI/人类混合体（这玩意太完整了，实际上它是一种新的“生命”）会同时具有极高的智慧和对整个宇宙的物质控制能力。Kurzweil暗示这将开启各种新的可能性，包括物理定律的颠覆、超空间旅行和无限的存在（真正的不朽）。

2008-09-25 17:54:11 lmm@看片一定不要看有毛的哦 《The Age of Intelligent Machines》（智能机器人时代）

毋庸置疑，Kurzweil从他的第一本书《智能机器人时代》中赢得了群众对他这个未来学家的巨大信赖。1986年到1989年著书，1990年出版，它预见到了苏联由于新科技，比如手机、传真机导致难以控制信息的流动，进而使独裁政府难以存续，最终解体解体。在这本书中Kurzweil也基于电脑象棋软件的强化趋势而做出推断，正确地预言计算机将在1998年左右打败人类最好的棋手。事实上，这件事发生在1997年五月，当时国际象棋世界冠军Garry Kasparov在一场广为宣传的象棋比赛中被IBM的“深蓝”电脑击败。可能这一点相当重要，那就是Kurzweil预见了互联网将会于20世纪90年代在全世界范围内爆炸式地普及。而在《The Age of Intelligent Machines》（智能机器人时代）出版的时候全世界只有260万互联网用户，那时这个媒体相当靠不住，难以使用，内容贫乏。Kurzweil的预言的实现最有预见性的一点是在那个时候给定了科技的局限性。他也说互联网的爆发不仅仅在于用户的数量，也在于它的内容。最终它会允许用户访问“图书馆、资料库、信息服务中心的国际网络”。 另外，Kurzweil也准确地预见了无线网络将无可避免地会是更互联网连接模式的优先选项，他也准确的预计在稍后的一段时间的21世纪初，无线网络将会被普遍适用。
Kurzweil也精确地预言在20世纪90年代末，许多文件将只会被保留在计算机和互联网中。它们一般都会包含动画、声音和视频，这些都会妨碍它们被弄成文字形式。此外，他预见了手机在可预见的未来内，将会在尺寸缩小的同时变得相当常见。
Kurzweil对未来军事科技的预见也类似地被《The Age of Intelligent Machines》（智能机器人时代）出版之后一些现实世界的事件所支持。他一份声明——关于世界上首屈一指的军队会频繁地依靠于越来越智能化电子化的武器，而非，他说，日益巨大化低科技化的兵器——壮观地展示了仅仅在一年之后的海湾战争，它被当作新式武器科技的一个展示柜。自从Kurzweil的书出版以后，倾向于越来越电子化的武器系统被精确军需供应的扩大应用更深入地展示了出来。例如在1991年的海湾战争中，全美海军军火花费的10%都是指导武器。在1999年的科索沃战争中，这个数字攀登到70%；在2001年到2002年的Operation Enduring Freedom（恒久自由行动）（LMM：就是美国人给阿富汗战争编的好听的名字）它达到了90%。同样像他预言的一样，遥控军用飞机获得了发展：从90年代中期的“掠食者”侦察机开始，到一个武装版的在2002年11月被首次使用。
Kurzweil也了描绘未来的一种计算机控制无人驾驶汽车，他声称制造这种汽车的科技将在21世纪的头十年达到可以利用的程度。然而因为政治反对和普遍的公众误解，它将不会在几十年之内被广泛应用。实际上，从1990年开始这个技术就有了巨大的发展，通用汽车也计划公布一种叫“交通助手”的新式电子汽车系统，这个系统只针对于它2008欧宝维达。“交通助手”使用了摄像头、激光和一个中央计算机来收集和处理从道路上得来的信息，并找到需要的路径和速度变化量。它理所应当地相当善于驾驭自己的能力，在60英里以内的时速不需要使用者输入任何指令。这使它成为了一辆真正的无人驾驶汽车。“交通助手”将不会被2008欧宝维达独占很久。通用已经宣布了它计划在2010年结束前也给一些其他种类的汽车提供这种系统的计划。由于越加严格的美国工业制品责任法，这种系统将不会在可预见的未来内被美国使用，也将不仅仅会在欧洲被供应出来。
Kurzweil预言可以从几乎任何资源（一张纸、一个路标、一个电脑屏幕）获取信息并用电子音大声狼毒出来的超小型文本扫描仪会在“二十一世纪早期”可以得到应用，并且将被用于抱住盲人。在2005年6月Ray Kurzweil自己公布了“Kurzweil民族联盟盲人阅读器”（K-NFB Reader），这是一个具有上述功能的阅读机器。然而，他早在1990年就宣布这些阅读器将能够辨认并描述除了文字之外的符号、图片和图标，阅读多种语言，拥有无限互联网通路，并且被“大多数”盲人和阅读障碍者使用，很可能也有一些正常人士。现今这种K-NFB Reader阅读器没有这些最终的功能。很可能的情况是这个装置可以在那个“二十一世纪早期”的模糊描述前被提升到必要的水平。Kurzweil在2006年奇点最高会议（LMM：summit我老是想成summary= =）上的一个演讲上说，他的公式目前的努力集中在加强K-NFB Reader阅读器的模式识别能力因此这个装置可以识别动物、物品和人，也医用面部识别系统来完成最终的任务。推算起来，一个复杂到能够控制这样的任务的机器也应当能阅读简单得多的符号和交通标示。

《The Age of Spiritual Machines》（神经机器人时代）

在1999年，Kurzweil出版了第二本名为《The Age of Spiritual Machines》（神经机器人时代）的书。它更深入地阐释了他的未来学家观点。第三部分也是这本书的最后一部分被用来阐述Kurzweil相信这个世界将会在下个世纪所经历的科技进步的具体过程。名为“面对未来”的这个部分被依次分为四个独立的小章节：“2009”、“2019、”“2029”、“2099”。在每一章节中，Kurzweil作出了关于生活和科技将会在那一年发生怎样变化的预测。
虽然Kurzweil关于2019年以及更远的时候的预言无法验证其真实性，但2009年相对于现在来说，已经足够近。这允许我们一一细查“2009”那一章中的许多观点。作为开始，Kurzweil说2009将是持续变迁的一年，由现今正普及率不断升高、性价比不断上涨的Flash记忆体(Flash memory?不知道是个啥= =)维持的老旧旋转式记忆体被纯粹的电子计算机记忆体所替代。他也准确地预见到了发展中的随处可见的无线互联网通路和无电缆计算机辅助设备。（Perhaps of even greater importance）或许相当重要地，Kurzweil也预示爆炸式发展在对等网路文件共享和因特网成为了商业交流的主要媒体，也成为了其他一些东西的访问媒体，例如电影、电视节目、报纸及杂志文本与音乐。他还说三维电脑芯片会在2009年被普遍使用（虽然旧点，“二维”芯片仍然占主流），这很可能通过IBM和无线通信的应用实现。IBM最近研发了（necessary）必要（？）芯片堆砌技术，和它对外公布说它已经将三维芯片应用于它的超级电脑。
在《The Age of Spiritual Machines》（神经机器人时代）中Kurzweil也花时间讨论了未来在教育上的计算资源的增加。他预言交互式软件和电子教育资料将会在2009年被使用。理所当然地，智能写字板，亦即，连接互联网、附带学习软件和活动功能的交互式白色书写板，也将会出现在发展中国家的学校中。

这种XO笔记本电脑正处于电子书籍阅览模式。这玩意因为被称为“100美刀的本本”而出名。
（LMM：去WIKI看了下，这个是一个图片的说明= =）
This article or section needs to be updated.
Please update the article to reflect recent events / newly available information, and remove this template when finished.
（LMM：也看了下，这个是插在中间的网站提示信息，呼唤有公益心的人来更新它）
Kurzweil更深入地谈到学生会普遍地拥有自己的便携式学习计算机，这玩意是一种“薄薄的写字板一样的装置，重量小于一磅”。当学生日益广泛地在学校里使用这种个人本本，它们会趋向于变得拥有传统的结构和更重的重量。但是Kurzweil预言的支柱是One Laptop Per Child Project（每个孩子都有的本本），这是瞄准横跨世界的发展中国家低端学生本本（常常被称为“100美刀本本”）市场的东东。这种计算机可以被迅速地从传统的笔记本样式重新组装成写字板一样的“e-book reading”（电子书籍阅览）样式。然而，这种“100美刀本本”还是重达三磅。第一批的五百万个笔记本曾在2007年的某一天被期望用船只来运送。乌拉圭政府是第一个下大订单的主顾，它在2007年10月买了10万个笔记本并公布了它可能在2009年之前再次购买30万个本本的计划。
然而文本——演讲翻译机，这种Kurzweil设想在2009年被广泛使用的东西，在今天的2008年1月上旬仍然很少见。各种技术正在被越来越广泛地使用。例如，战略游戏Endwar（最终战争）——计划在2008年放出——拥有一个很有特色的命令窗口，它an extremely robust voice command interface.电子化的远程学习，同样地，在网络上已经相当普遍。例如：open.yale.edu（LMM：这个应该是耶鲁大学的。这是一个网址。）,youtube.com/ucberkeley （LMM：应该是youtobe的加州伯克利大学的网络课程。也是一个网址。）,and Second Life.（LMM：“第二人生”，一个类似于网游的玩意。不过里面是实名制，实际交易与交流。算是目前的一个比较牛X的虚拟互交系统。[PS：我咋打出那两个字的之后就想歪了呢？……]）
Kurzweil也重申他在《The Age of Intelligent Machines》（智能机器人时代）中早些的预言。这个预言是关于那种超小型尺寸，为盲人服务的文本——演讲翻译机的出现的。“Kurzweil民族联盟盲人阅读器”（K-NFB Reader）在2005年被公布，一个在价格上的重要下调会在2009年变得相当必要，在这之后它会理所应当地被归为“廉价”——一个Kurzweil宣布它们将拥有的性质。
Kurzweil预言在2009年战争将被无人战斗机主宰。虽然在2007年，战斗仍然被士兵、舰队和飞行器们控制着，从1999年以来无人机仍然有了长足的进步，也将会被越来越广泛地使用。这些预言也包括MQ-1掠食者和MQ-9收割者飞机在美国军中普遍的现役状态。
Kurzweil预言国人隐私会称为一个政治问题（见CCTV：隐私）（LMM：我被震精了！查查看，原来是Closed-circuit television (CCTV)= =。这是一个WIKI条目=。=！）
Kurzweil也预言闲置的电脑的闲置资源会通过互联网被集中起来，集中许多普通PC（LMM：即个人电脑）的计算资源来制造一个“虚拟并行超级计算机”。 当1998年Kurzweil还在创作《The Age of Intelligent Machines》（智能机器人时代）的时候，分布式运算对于普通民众还是一个陌生的词汇，而两大工程——巨型因特网梅森素数搜索活动和Distributed.net（LMM：查了查，没细看，Distributed Computing Technologies, Inc “分布式计算科技组织”，好像是研究密码的。）——只分别获得了8千和1万的计算机闲置资源提供量。在1999年5月，通过SETI@home工程（LMM：研究可能的外星人电波的）分布式计算得到了爆发式普及。而这个SETI@home工程在最初网站放出的头一个星期就吸引了20万的用户，并且在2002年7月拥有383万人下载并运行它的客户端。今天，多数的分布式计算项目

2008-09-20 00:10:48 北星 作为世界领先的科技发明家和未来学家，Kurzweil对未来的预测恐怕
是当今最有权威的。Wiki百科上列举了许多他过去作过的成功预测。
他作为未来学家的声誉也是这么得来的（有人翻译吗？）：
------------------------------------------------
下面转自wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

Accuracy of （Kurzweil's） predictions

The Age of Intelligent Machines

Arguably, Kurzweil gained a large amount of credibility as a futurist from his first book The Age of Intelligent Machines. Written from 1986 to 1989 and published in 1990, it forecast the demise of the Soviet Union due to new technologies such as cellular phones and fax machines disempowering authoritarian governments by removing state control over the flow of information. In the book Kurzweil also extrapolated preexisting trends in the improvement of computer chess software performance to predict correctly that computers would beat the best human players by 1998, and most likely in that year. In fact, the event occurred in May 1997 when chess World Champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Deep Blue computer in a well-publicized chess tournament. Perhaps most significantly, Kurzweil foresaw the explosive growth in worldwide Internet use that began in the 1990s. At the time of the publication of The Age of Intelligent Machines, there were only 2.6 million Internet users in the world,[28] and the medium was unreliable, difficult to use, and deficient in content, making Kurzweil's realization of its future potential especially prescient given the technology's limitations at that time. He also stated that the Internet would explode not only in the number of users but in content as well, eventually granting users access "to international networks of libraries, data bases, and information services". Additionally, Kurzweil correctly foresaw that the preferred mode of Internet access would inevitably be through wireless systems, and he was also correct to estimate that the latter would become practical for widespread use in the early 21st century.

Kurzweil also accurately predicted that many documents would exist solely on computers and on the Internet by the end of the 1990s, and that they would commonly be embedded with animations, sounds and videos that would prohibit their transference to paper format. Moreover, he foresaw that cellular phones would grow in popularity while shrinking in size for the foreseeable future.

Kurzweil's views regarding the future of military technology were likewise supported by the course of real-world events following the publication of The Age of Intelligent Machines. His pronouncement that the world's foremost militaries would continually rely on more intelligent, computerized weapons instead of, say, increasingly large, low-tech armies, was illustrated spectacularly just a year later during the Gulf War, which served as a showcase for new weapons technologies. The trend towards greater computerization of weapons systems is further demonstrated by the increased use of precision munitions since the publication of Kurzweil's book. For example, 10% of all U.S. Naval ordnance expended during the Gulf War (1991) were guided weapons. During the Kosovo campaign (1999), that quantity climbed to 70%, and it reached 90% during the 2001-2002 Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.[29] As he also predicted, remotely controlled military aircraft were developed, beginning with the Predator reconnaissance plane in the mid-90s, and an armed version of the aircraft was first used in combat in November 2002.[30]

Kurzweil also described the future of computer-controlled, driverless cars, claiming that the technology to build them would become available during the first decade of the 21st century, yet that due to political opposition and the general public's mistrust of the technology, the computerized cars would not become widely used until several decades hence. In fact, considerable progress has been made with the technology since 1990, and General Motors is scheduled to unveil a new electronic car system called "Traffic Assist" in its 2008 Opel Vectra model. "Traffic Assist" uses video cameras, lasers and a central computer to gather and process information from the road and to make course and speed changes as needed, and is supposedly capable of driving itself without any input from the user in speeds below 60 mph, making it a true driverless car[31] "Traffic Assist" will not be exclusive to the 2008 Opel Vectra for long as GM has announced plans to offer the system for several other types of cars before the end of the decade.[32] Due to stricter U.S. product liability laws, the system will not be available in America for the foreseeable future and will only be offered in Europe.[32]

Kurzweil predicted that pocket-sized machines capable of scanning text from almost any source (a piece of paper, a road sign, a computer screen) and then reading the text out loud in a computerized voice would be available "In the early twenty-first century" and would be used to assist blind people. In June 2005, Ray Kurzweil himself unveiled the "Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" (K-NFB Reader), which is a reading machine possessing the aforementioned attributes.[33] However, he also claimed back in 1990 that the readers would be able to recognize and describe symbols, pictures and graphics in addition to words, read multiple languages, possess wireless Internet access, and be in use with "most" blind and dyslexic people, and perhaps among some normal people as well. While the K-NFB Reader does not have these final attributes, it is possible that the device may be upgraded to the necessary level before the nebulously defined "early twenty-first century" expires. Kurzweil stated during a speech to the 2006 Singularity Summit that his company's current efforts are focused on increasing the pattern recognition abilities of the K-NFB Reader so that the device could identify animals, objects and people, also utilizing facial recognition programs for the final task.[34] Presumably, a machine complex enough to handle such tasks would also be able to read much simpler written symbols and traffic signs.


The Age of Spiritual Machines

In 1999, Kurzweil published a second book titled The Age of Spiritual Machines, which goes into more depth explaining his futurist ideas. The third and final section of the book is devoted to elucidating the specific course of technological advancements Kurzweil believes the world will experience over the next century. Titled "To Face the Future", the section is divided into four chapters respectively named "2009", "2019", "2029", and "2099". For every chapter, Kurzweil issues predictions about what life and technology will be like in that year.

While the veracity of Kurzweil's predictions for 2019 and beyond cannot yet be determined, 2009 is near enough to the present to allow many of the ideas of the "2009" chapter to be scrutinized. To begin, Kurzweil's claims that 2009 would be a year of continued transition as purely electronic computer memories continued to replace older rotating memories seems to be vindicated by the current growth in the popularity and cost-performance of Flash memory. He also correctly foresaw the growing ubiquity of wireless Internet access and cordless computer peripherals. Perhaps of even greater importance, Kurzweil presaged the explosive growth in peer-to-peer filesharing and the emergence of the Internet as a major medium for commerce and for accessing media such as movies, television programs, newspaper and magazine text, and music. He also claimed that three-dimensional computer chips would be in common use by 2009 (though older, "2-D" chips would still predominate), and this appears likely as IBM has recently developed the necessary chip-stacking technology and announced plans to begin using three-dimensional chips in its supercomputers and for wireless communication applications.[35]

In The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil also spent time discussing future increases in computing use in education. He predicted that interactive software and electronic learning materials would be used by 2009. Indeed, smartboards, interactive whiteboards with a connection to the Internet and learning software and activities are commonly used in schools in developed nations.[36]


The XO Laptop in ebook-mode. Also known as the "$100 laptop". This article or section needs to be updated.
Please update the article to reflect recent events / newly available information, and remove this template when finished.

Kurzweil went further to say that students would commonly have portable learning computers in the form of a "thin tablet-like device weighing under a pound." While students increasingly use portable laptops in schools, they tend to be of traditional configuration and of greater weight. But supporting Kurzweil's prediction is the emergence of the One Laptop Per Child Project, which aims to provide low-cost laptop computers (often called the "$100 Laptop") to students in developing nations across the world. The computer can be quickly reconfigured from traditional laptop layout to a tablet-like "e-book reading" layout.[37] However, the $100 Laptop also weighs over three pounds.[38] The first batch of 5 million laptops[39] is expected to ship sometime in 2007.[40] The government of Uruguay was the first to make a major order, buying 100,000 of the laptops in October, 2007 and announcing plans for the possible purchase of 300,000 more units by 2009.[41]

While text-to-speech converters, which Kurzweil imagined in widespread use by 2009, remain uncommon as of early January 2008, such technologies are rapidly becoming more and more widely used; for example, the strategy game EndWar, scheduled for release in 2008, features an extremely robust voice command interface.[42] Computerized distance learning, also, is already fairly common at sites such as open.yale.edu, youtube.com/ucberkeley, and Second Life.

Kurzweil also restates his earlier prediction from The Age of Intelligent Machines regarding the advent of pocket-sized, text-to-speech converters for the blind. The "Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" (K-NFB Reader) was introduced in 2005, though a significant reduction in price would be required by 2009 to reasonably classify the device as "cheap" -- one quality Kurzweil claimed they would possess.

Kurzweil predicted that warfare in 2009 would be dominated by unmanned combat planes. While combat in 2007 is still dominated by soldiers, ships, and aircraft, unmanned aircraft have nevertheless advanced considerably since 1999 and are more widely used. These include the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper planes currently on active duty in the U.S. military.

Kurzweil predicted privacy emerging as a political issue (see CCTV: Privacy).

Kurzweil also predicted that unused processing power from idle computers would be harvested via the Internet, pooling the computational resources of many ordinary PCs to create "virtual parallel supercomputers." When Kurzweil wrote The Age of Spiritual Machines in 1998, distributed computing was unknown to the general public, and the two biggest projects—the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search and Distributed.net—had about 8,000[43] and 100,000[44] computers contributing idle-time processing power, respectively. The popularity of distributed computing exploded in May 1999 with the release of the SETI@home program, which attracted 200,000 users within a week of initial Internet release, and by July 2002, 3.83 million people had downloaded and run the client. Today, the vast majority of distributed computing projects fall under the auspices of either United Devices or BOINC.[45] As of November 2007, BOINC has more than 1.1 million active users and almost 2.4 million hosts.[46] Sony also offers users of the Internet-capable PS3 game console the option to donate their machines' idle processing power to Folding@home–an online distributed computing project that seeks to understand the process of protein folding. More than 600,000 PS3 users have agreed to lend their game consoles to the task, resulting in a record-breaking petaflop (1015calculations per second) of processing power in November 2007.[47] This makes the Folding@home project only slightly less powerful (in terms of raw calculating power) than the human brain, which Kurzweil estimates to be capable of 20 x 1015 calculations per second. Kurzweil predicted that in 2009, these networks will have more raw power than a human brain.

Kurzweil's prediction that portable computers will shrink in size and take on nontraditional physical forms (i.e. - very different in design from a laptop or desktop computer) by 2009 is supported by the emergence of devices such as the portable media players and advanced cell phones, as well as by newer PDAs. All meet Kurzweil's aforementioned criteria, being small to the point of wearability, possessing the power and range of function of older computers, and featuring designs that radically depart from normal computers. Kurzweil's forecast that these devices would store information without the use of rotating disk style hard drives was also right.

However, his claim that such portable computers will be commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry by 2009 seems unlikely to pass, as does his prediction that people will typically be wearing "at least a dozen" such computers in the same year. Most "portable computers" as they are defined here also have built-in keyboards or accessible keyboard functions (such as a digital keyboard that can be manipulated through a touchscreen), putting reality again at odds with Kurzweil's belief that most computers would lack this feature by 2009, with users instead relying on continuous speech recognition (CSR) to communicate with their PCs.

Similarly, Kurzweil's claim that, by 2009, "the majority of text" will be created through continuous speech recognition (CSR) programs instead of through keyboards and manual typing seems highly unlikely. In that vein, he also implied in The Age of Spiritual Machines that CSR software should in fact have already replaced human transcriptionists years before 2009 (i.e. - 2007 or earlier) due in part to its projected superiority in understanding speech compared to human listeners. CSR is not yet this advanced, and the total replacement of human transcriptionists did not happen.

His prediction that there are 100 computers in the average household is debatable, as it depends upon one's definition of a computer. If one considers microchips and the like computers, then it is quite likely, between all the clocks, microwaves, washing machines, televisions, and other devices in the household. Any other way doesn't seem to work, however. This links into his prediction of domestic robots being around but not mainstream (see Domestic robots).

Since the publication of The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil has even tacitly admitted that some of his 2009 predictions will not happen on schedule. For instance, in the book he forecast that specialized eyeglasses that beamed computer-generated images onto the retinas of their users to produce a HUD-effect would be in wide use by 2009. However, the computerized voice translating services he predicted, allowing people speaking different languages to understand one another through a phone, are available.

The Age of Spiritual Machines also features a "Timeline" section at the end, which summarizes both the history of technological advancement and Kurzweil's predictions for the future.[48]


The Singularity is Near

While this book focuses on the future of technology and the human race as The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines did, Kurzweil makes very few concrete, short-term predictions in The Singularity is Near, though longer-term visions are present in abundance.

Kurzweil predicts that, in 2005, supercomputers with the computational capacities to simulate protein folding will be introduced. However, he does not say that an adequate scientific understanding of the forces behind protein folding will come into being in the same year, meaning that the supercomputers might lack the software to mimic accurately the biochemical process. In fact, protein folding is still (as of 2008) a poorly understood phenomenon, and even supercomputer simulations remain inaccurate outside of simulating the folding of basic proteins.


Other Sources

In an October 2002 article published on his website, Kurzweil stated that "Deep Fritz-like chess programs running on ordinary personal computers will routinely defeat all humans later in this decade."[49]

Deep Fritz is a computer chess program--generally considered superior to the older Deep Blue--that has defeated or tied a number of human chess masters and opposing chess programs.[50] Due to advances in personal computer performance, the Deep Fritz program can now run on ordinary personal computers, and different versions of it are available for purchase.[51][52] While this makes the first part of Kurzweil's prediction true, it is unknown whether the Deep Fritz programs are currently defeating all humans in all games played, though considering the impressive professional record of Deep Fritz, it would be reasonable to assume that only the very best human players can beat the program with consistency.

In September 2002, Chessmaster 9000, a widely available chess playing game from Ubisoft, defeated the then U.S. Chess Champion and International Grandmaster Larry Christiansen in a four-game match.[53]

Raymond Kurzwe的预测摘要

2008-09-18 22:54:49 北星


大致有意思的有下面几点。关键的是：2045年奇点就将来临。我们大家努把力都可以看到:)

2030s:　大脑上传成为可能。

2040s: 人体3.0升级版出现: 通过纳米技术使人体升级成非肉体的、可以随意变形的形态。人们大多数时间沉浸在虚拟现实里（像电影Matrix一样）

2045: 奇点来临，人工智能超越人类智能，人类历史将完全改变。

2045之后：宇宙觉醒，为了超越计算机的局限性，人机智能将物质转化为超级计算机，最终整个宇宙会变成一个超级智能，这个智能可能可以改变物理定律，实现不同维数空间的穿越，并实现真正的永生。

美国《新闻周刊》2009年5月25日关于Ray Kurzweil的文章http://www.newsweek.com/id/197812

I, Robot (Part 1)

Ray Kurzweil can't wait to be a Cyborg—a human mind inside an everlasting machine. But is this the next great leap in human evolution, or just one man's midlife crisis writ large?


John Huet for Newsweek
Ray Kurzweil in his office in Wellesley, MA
By Daniel Lyons | NEWSWEEK
Published May 16, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 25, 2009


Ray Kurzweil's wildest dream is to be turned into a cyborg—a flesh-and-blood human enhanced with tiny embedded computers, a man-machine hybrid with billions of microscopic nanobots coursing through his bloodstream. And there's a moment, halfway through a conversation in his office in Wellesley, Mass., when I start to think that Kurzweil's transformation has already begun. It's the way he talks—in a flat, robotic monotone. Maybe it's just because he's been giving the same spiel, over and over, for years now. He does 70 speeches annually at $30,000 a pop, and draws crowds of adoring fans who worship him as a kind of prophet. Kurzweil is a legend in the world of computer geeks, an inventor, author and computer scientist who bills himself as a futurist. The ideas he's espousing are as radical as anything you've ever heard. But the strangest thing about Ray Kurzweil is that when you sit down for a one-on-one chat with him, he's absolutely boring.

Listen closely, though, and you may be slightly terrified. Kurzweil believes computer intelligence is advancing so rapidly that in a couple of decades, machines will be as intelligent as humans. Soon after that they will surpass humans and start creating even smarter technology. By the middle of this century, the only way for us to keep up will be to merge with the machines so that their superior intelligence can boost our weak little brains and beef up our pitiful, illness-prone bodies. Some of Kurzweil's fellow futurists believe these superhuman computers will want nothing to do with us—that we will become either their pets or, worse yet, their food. Always an optimist, Kurzweil takes a more upbeat view. He swears these superhuman computers will love us, and honor us, since we'll be their ancestors. He also thinks we'll be able to embed our consciousness into silicon, which means we can live on, inside machines, forever and ever, amen.

Kurzweil calls this moment "The Singularity," and says it represents the next great leap in human evolution, when humans will transcend biology by merging with technology. Kurzweil truly believes this is going to happen—and he can't wait to be part of it. All he has to do is stay alive until 2045, when he believes the necessary technologies will be available. So he lives on a strict diet, and every day he swallows 150 dietary supplements in order to "reprogram" his body's biochemistry. Today he is 61 years old and in very good health. In 2045 he will be 97. In other words, it's doable.

Over four decades, Kurzweil has amassed a set of high-tech bona fides that compel people to listen to his ideas, even if they are farfetched. He pioneered development of flatbed scanners, optical-character-recognition software, text-to-speech software and speech-recognition software. He's launched and sold companies that make reading machines for the blind and electronic-music synthesizers. Four of his books have been national bestsellers. He's won a string of awards, including the National Medal of Technology, and has been granted 15 honorary doctorates in science, engineering and even music. He's been an adviser to the U.S. military and has testified before Congress about nanotechnology.

Still, a lot of people think Kurzweil is completely bonkers and/or full of a certain messy byproduct of ordinary biological functions. They include P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who has used his blog to poke fun at Kurzweil and other armchair futurists who, according to Myers, rely on junk science and don't understand basic biology. "I am completely baffled by Kurzweil's popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination," writes Myers. He says Kurzweil's Singularity theories are closer to a deluded religious movement than they are to science. "It's a New Age spiritualism—that's all it is," Myers says. "Even geeks want to find God somewhere, and Kurzweil provides it for them."

Yet Kurzweil's ideas are catching on. What makes him especially convincing is that he's not some wild man leaping around a stage. He is calm and pleasant and soft-spoken. He wears dark suits and ties. He's married, and lives in the suburbs of Boston, and drives a Lexus. He and his wife, Sonya, a psychologist, have two grown children. Yes, Kurzweil has an ego. But he's also happy to discuss his detractors, and is respectful toward them, like some kindhearted professor. He presents himself as a bright, sweet-natured computer nerd who happens to have the time and resources to pursue a somewhat eccentric passion. And his shtik is working. Transcendent Man, a new documentary about Kurzweil, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Another film, produced by Kurzweil himself, lays out the ideas contained in his book The Singularity Is Near; it will be in theaters later this year. Even the big brains at Google have been swept up in Kurzweil's vision. Google cofounder Larry Page has worked with Kurzweil on a study about the future of solar power, and in February of this year launched Singularity University, a nine-week summer program that will bring together thinkers from nanotechnology, bioinformatics, robotics and artificial intelligence, with Kurzweil in charge. But even some of Kurzweil's associates secretly think he's a bit off his rocker, and that his ideas are driven more by fear of death than by solid science. "Ray is going through the single most public midlife crisis that any male has ever gone through," says one scientist who will be teaching at Singularity University and who asked for anonymity because he didn't want to criticize a colleague publicly.

Kurzweil knew at the age of 5 that he wanted to be an inventor. When he was 8 he built an elaborate mechanized puppet show featuring a character called Ramona—sort of a female alter ego for Ray. As a teenager he began tinkering with computers, and in high school Kurzweil wrote a computer program that could compose music. At 16 he found himself on national TV, showing it off. He zipped through MIT, acing his math and science courses without attending class, and graduating in 1970 with a double degree in computer science and creative writing.

I Robot (Part 2)

While at MIT he developed a computer program that helped high-school kids choose the right college. He sold the program to a publisher for $100,000. Next he started a company that developed and integrated three technologies—optical-character-recognition software, a flatbed scanner and a text-to-speech synthesizer—to create a machine that could read documents to the blind. Stevie Wonder bought one, which led to a friendship with Kurzweil and to Kurzweil's next product, a music synthesizer that could re-create the sound of real acoustic instruments. Kurzweil sold the reading-machine company to Xerox in 1980, and sold the music-synthesizer company to Young Chang, a musical-instrument company in Korea, in 1990. Since then, Kurzweil has dabbled in technology for education and medicine. He now runs a hedge fund called FatKat, which uses artificial intelligence and pattern-recognition software to pick stocks, as well as Kurzweil Technologies, a 20-person outfit that invests in early-stage tech companies and incubates ideas of its own, too.

But even as he was building his companies, Kurzweil harbored a passion for artificial intelligence. He was consumed by the idea that computers might someday enable us to extend our lives, or perhaps even make us immortal. The seeds for this thinking lay in the loss of his father, Fredric, a composer and conductor who died of heart disease in 1970, when Kurzweil was 22 years old. "I find death unacceptable," Kurzweil says. Kurzweil idolized his father, and became obsessed with developing ways in which his father might be brought back to life. (He now believes it will be possible.) Two decades ago he began writing books, starting with The Age of Intelligent Machines in 1990, followed by The Age of Spiritual Machines in 1998 and The Singularity Is Near in 2005. He also has a new book out, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever, which tells you how to stay healthy long enough to experience The Singularity and become immortal.

Kurzweil also likes to make predictions, and he claims he's found a foolproof, data-driven methodology for predicting the future. In 1990 he predicted that a computer would defeat a world chess champion by 1998. In fact, it happened in 1997, when IBM's supercomputer, Deep Blue, defeated Garry Kasparov. Kurzweil also predicted the rapid growth of the Internet and World Wide Web, and the ubiquity of wireless Internet access.

But hold on a minute. Who didn't think the Internet was going to catch on? And when you go back and check Kurzweil's previous books, you find that many of his predictions turned out to be wrong—not just a little bit wrong, but wildly, laughably wrong. During the height of the dotcom boom in 1998, Kurzweil predicted that the economy would keep on booming right through 2009 (and on to 2019, for that matter) and that one U.S. company (he didn't say which) would have a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion. Not even close. Kurzweil also predict-ed that by 2009 a top supercomputer would be capable of performing 20 quadrillion operations per second (20 petaflops in computer jargon), the same as the human brain. In fact, the top supercomputer just broke the one-petaflop mark—though Kurzweil says he considers all of Google to be a giant supercomputer and that it is, indeed, capable of performing 20 petaflops. Kurzweil also predicted that by now our cars would be able to drive themselves by communicating with intelligent sensors embedded in highways, and that speech recognition would be in widespread use. Neither has happened, but he insists they're both right around the corner. ("I was off by a few years," he says.)

Kurzweil makes predictions based on a notion that he calls "the law of accelerating returns," which holds that technology does not advance in a linear fashion but rather at an exponential rate. It's the difference between 1-2-3-4-5 and 1-2-4-8-16. Go out 10 steps and the linear string has reached 10, while the exponential string is hitting 512. With an exponential progression, at first, when the numbers are small, the progress doesn't look like much. But each new breakthrough enables the next breakthrough to occur more quickly, so the rate of change accelerates. Represented on a graph, the line of progress looks like a hockey stick—it's flat for some years, and then there's a sudden rise, which gets misinterpreted as a sudden breakthrough when really it's just the continuation of an exponential progression, Kurzweil says.

He cites as an example the work of the Human Genome Project. In 1990 scientists had managed to transcribe only one ten-thousandth of the genome over an entire year. Yet their goal was to sequence the entire genome in 15 years. After seven years, only 1 percent had been sequenced. But, in fact, the project was on track. The rate of progress was doubling every year, which meant that when researchers finished 1 percent they were only seven steps away from reaching 100 percent. Indeed, the project was completed in 2003. "People thought it would take centuries," Kurzweil says, because they foolishly believed that technology could advance only in a linear fashion. That same kind of linear thinking fuels the current hysteria about global warming. "People are assuming that nothing will change in the next few decades. They're ignoring the progression in renewable energy," Kurzweil says. After studying the subject, he and Google's Page concluded that the nanotechnologies needed to collect the energy of the sun are advancing at such a pace that in 20 years, solar power will be able to provide 100 percent of the earth's energy needs.

Apply that same kind of exponential progression to computer science, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and biotechnology, and you arrive at The Singularity. Right now human brains are still much better than computers at doing things like pattern recognition. That's because while the brain works at slower speeds than a computer, it has 100 trillion interneuronal connections, so it can perform 20 petaflops, while the fastest supercomputer can perform one or two petaflops. But computers are doubling in power every year, and learning to do more things in parallel. Meanwhile, scientists are figuring out how the human brain works. Within two decades, Kurzweil believes, scientists will be able to "reverse engineer" the human brain and re-create its functionality in souped-up silicon. By 2029 a computer will achieve intelligence equivalent to that of a human being, or so close that the two cannot be told apart.

I Robot (Part 3)

After that, computers will start engineering their own replacements, and the hockey-stick curve will soar upward. By 2045, Kurzweil estimates, we will use computers to enhance our intelligence, and "nanobots"—microscopic machines—to roam our bloodstream, stomping out diseases before they can spread. Maybe this sounds nuts. But Kurzweil points out that today doctors can implant a computer the size of a pea into the brain of a person suffering with Parkinson's disease. Why shouldn't we believe that in 20 years such devices will be the size of a blood cell? "The computer in my cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful than the computer that we used at MIT when I was an undergraduate," he says. "That's a billionfold increase. And we'll do that again in the next 25 years."

What happens then? Once computers are a billion times more powerful than today—and we're all a bunch of cyborgs with brains like supercomputers and bodies that can't be killed by disease? For one thing, stuff starts progressing really, really fast. Imagine a thousand scientists, each a thousand times smarter than they are today, operating a thousand times faster. First thing these smarty-pants cyborgs will do, Kurzweil reckons, is make themselves even smarter, and then smarter still, until intelligence is sprouting all over the place like some kind of crazy out-of-control IQ kudzu. Eventually you've got scientists who are a million times smarter and a million times faster than they are today. Breakthroughs should be popping up all over. "An hour would result in a century of progress [in today's terms]," Kurzweil claims in The Singularity Is Near. Eventually, we leap beyond the boundaries of our planet, and every bit of matter in the entire universe becomes intelligent. "This," Kurzweil concludes, "is the destiny of the universe."

These ideas have attracted some high-powered followers. Kurzweil's partner at Singularity University is Peter Diamandis, best known for his work as the chairman and founder of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit in California that grants prizes for breakthroughs in space technology and other areas. In 1987 Diamandis founded the International Space University to teach courses about space. Three years ago Diamandis read The Singularity Is Near and was so taken by the work, he contacted Kurzweil and proposed creating a university to teach people about The Singularity. Diamandis takes 40 supplements a day and says he expects to live several centuries. "There are many life forms on the planet that live for hundreds of years," he says, "and there's no reason we can't." Diamandis says academics who scoff at The Singularity are just threatened because the established order will be disrupted. "These technologies can topple major companies, even governments," he says. "All these ideas are about empowering the individual."

The goal of living long enough to experience The Singularity has taken over Kurzweil's life, turning him into a health nut. He's trim and fit, thanks to exercise, a careful diet and loads of supplements. It's also made him wealthier. He's written three books on the subject. His latest, Transcend, released in April, is coauthored with a physician, Terry Grossman, and provides recipes—baked cod, cauliflower with Indian spices, fruit smoothies—and tells you what supplements you should be taking. Grossman and Kurzweil sell their own line of supplements, vitamins and nutrition shakes called Ray & Terry's Longevity Products. Kurzweil has even crafted a contingency plan in case he dies before The Singularity arrives. He'll be frozen in liquid nitrogen and put into storage, waiting for technology to rescue him from the grave. Kurzweil also hopes to bring his father back to life by getting DNA from his father's grave site and using a swarm of nanobots to create a new body that is "indistinguishable from the original person." He'll dig up all of his father's old letters and other materials, and download them along with his own memories into an artificial-intelligence program to create a "virtual person."

The great thing about being a futurist, of course, is that you can't really be proved wrong. You can predict away, secure in the knowledge that no one is going to time-travel into the future and come back to tell the world that you got it wrong. Or that you're a complete loon. All we know is this: Kurzweil is very intelligent, very rich and very sincere. And very adamant. No matter what hurdle you throw at him, Kurzweil has already thought about it and has his answer ready. Won't the Singularity tech-nologies be available only to people who can afford them? Won't that create a situation where the rich become "enhanced," and the rest of us become moronic muggles? Kurzweil says no, the price of technologies will come down so quickly that everyone will be able to afford them. OK, so what about natural selection? If we all stop dying, won't we mess that up? "Natural selection isn't significant anymore," Kurzweil says. "Technological change is the cutting edge of evolution." As for fears that computers will kill us, or keep us as slaves, Kurzweil insists the computers will want us around.

Kurzweil took some serious heat on this last point during a panel discussion after the premiere of Transcendent Man at the Tribeca Film Festival last month. Some leading artificial-intelligence experts were in the audience, and they think we are racing toward a dystopian future. But Kurzweil is having none of that—he thinks the "man-machine civilization" is going to be wonderful. He doesn't argue. He just sits there, smiling. Ask him a pointed question and he just dodges it and launches into another monologue. He has no doubt. None. He is utterly, completely, 100 percent sure that he is going to live forever. He will be reunited with his beloved father, and they will become immortal and spend eternity together. He is absolutely certain about this. Nothing can talk him out of it. And that, at the end of the day, may be the scariest, or saddest, thing of all.

几个链接：

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil

http://singularityu.org/

http://singularity.com/themovie/

http://transcendentman.com/

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0467.html?

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/transcendent-man-film-about-kurzweil