Educause keynote by Ray Kurzweil

 Yesterday morning at Educause, we were treated to a presentation by Ray Kurzweil

The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: the Impact on Education and Society -

Source: Detailed Conference Agenda

Well known as a futurist and pundit of accelerating change, he gave a great overview of current trends, exponential change and what is predictable. For anyone familiar with his writings, especially his stuff in 'The Singularity is Near', some of it was stuff he has said/written before.

In making his predictions, which have generally proven to be remarkably accurate, he is careful to extrapolate from current data and not do the wishful thinking bit. What makes his stuff seem incredible is that we don't allow for the exponential increase in the rate of change - we all tend to extrapolate linearly based on current experience.

He talked about trends in computing, miniaturisation towards nanotech, artificial intelligence, genomics and longevity. Quite the panoply of topics. Very entertaining and yet also insightful. If you ever get a chance to listen to one of his presentations, grab it.

He runs an interesting web site: KurzweilAI.net - worth taking a look at. You may find some of his stuff rather far fetched - most people do...and his predictions have been decried many times over the decades...but he has been accurate in many many areas.