
Ray Kurzweil predicts how technology will change humanity by 2020 - jonmc12
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/12/13/2009-12-13_top_futurist_ray_kurzweil_predicts_how_technology_will_change_humanity_by_2020.html
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bioweek
Too ambitious? I'm thinking 2020 will look pretty much like 2010 which looks
pretty much like 2000 :-(

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ugh
2000 like 2010? You don’t really believe that, right?

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nzmsv
And what's significantly different?

We are still stuck with the x86 architecture. All operating systems are just
new versions of the same products. Sure, the web got rounded corners, dial-up
is completely gone, and the dot-com bubble burst, but computing has not
changed a whole lot.

The changes of the last decade have been mostly bug fixes. Not that this is a
bad thing.

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MikeCapone
People get used to things extremely rapidly. A lot of the stuff we use daily
would seem almost magical to some people living today, not to mention 2-3
generations back.

You can search billions and billions of documents for free in less than a
second, and my parents had to buy non-scientific calculators for insane
prices.

Supercomputers from not so long ago probably couldn't play 1080p video
decently.

Cellphones went from bricks that cost thousands to cheap things that everybody
has.

Cars now have more computing power than computers had recently.

We're building massive databases of genetic information and annotating it
rapidly. The cost of sequencing base pairs of DNA is dropping very rapidly.

But people still think nothing is changing.

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jrp
What you mention doesn't apply to 10 years ago. Maybe 20-50 years ago.

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rglullis
10 years ago there was no iPod. Even mp3 was not that popular. It was when
Napster started.

10 years ago there was NO way you could have video on the internet. Real
streaming was a joke.

10 years ago, people were still using Altavista and getting internet access
through AOL CDs.

10 years ago, Yahoo! Mail offered 2MB of space.

10 years ago, there was no genome sequencing complete.

10 years ago, cell phones were small, but they couldn't do much besides
talking and texting. Remember how they looked like? Motorola's Startac was
pretty modern, and it didn't have a LCD screen. Color displays were a dream.

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WilliamLP
For a decade of advancement, your examples are very weak. Compare 1970->1980
or 1980->1990 for the change in everyday technology!

I had an mp3 player in 2000. Creative released a 6GB hard drive based player
in 2000 with which you'd still do fine today. It was Napster's heyday. I had a
cable connection very capable of delivering video on the internet. Sure, the
majority of streaming was porn sites, but the capability was there. I was
using Google then, like I am now. The Startac was released in 1996. By 2000
there were many LCD phones, and the BlackBerry was available.

I don't see how a tech-savvy person could not have lived a very similar life
in 2000. Look at 1990 with no graphical internet (for instance) and
_qualitatively_ less computer capability, and there really isn't any
comparison in rate of change.

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ugh
Tech-savy, sure. But not the rest. People didn't use all that in 2000, now
they do, whether or not they are tech-savy. That counts for change.

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lssndrdn
Predictions of the future are always,necessarily, extrapolations of the
present. Back in the 1930's, when airplanes and cars were the hot techonology
of the day, it was obvious to imagine a future with flying cars. Now, we're
still going through the information revolution (at least in some countries)
and it's easy to imagine a future with more pervasive computational
technologies.

But I wonder what the next paradigm change will be. Some (Thomas Friedman
among them) say it's going to be energy revolution: cheap, clean, available
energy for everyone. I think that's a pretty good bet.

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randallsquared
We could have had that energy revolution decades ago, but we threw it away. :)
Hopefully there will be no such mistake made with solar, et al.

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bitwize
Are you referring to nuclear power? We didn't throw it away. Indeed, the very
question of waste which _can't_ be simply thrown away has hampered widespread
nuclear plant deployment.

Nuclear is off the table until we figure out what to do with the waste.

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randallsquared
We know what to do with the waste: burn it up in nuclear reactors. Much of
what's called "waste" is really just partially-processed fuel, and the only
two reasons it isn't viewed that way are, first, proliferation fear and,
second, it was convenient for all the major groups involved to spread FUD
about the terrible dangers of nuclear waste.

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dantheman
Agreed, France has an excellent nuclear power program.

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bitwize
Tell that to the Somalis.

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dantheman
?

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bitwize
The Somali pirates, who for some reason love to pillage French vessels,
evolved out of fishermen, in the vacuum left by the absent government and
coast guard, patrolling the shores where they fished for ships from Western
(mainly European) countries dumping toxic and nuclear waste into the waters
and killing the fish.

So any time I hear about how the French have their act together nuclear-wise,
I have to wonder where that waste goes, and if some of it ends up off the
coast of Somalia.

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scotty79
I'd really hate to belong to last mortal human generation.

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pwnstigator
Depends what happens after death.

~~~
scotty79
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBUc_kATGgg>

I dedicate to you the 4-th verse of this song.

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gamble
I don't know what the world will look like in 2020, but I know what Kurzweil
will be up to: still trying to turn a buck hustling bizarre 'life-extension'
supplements. That is, if the 100+ pills he takes daily or the weekly
transfusions don't kill him first.

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henrikschroder
To understand Kurzweil you have to understand that he is very, very, very
afraid of dying. With that knowledge, everything he says and does becomes a
lot more understandable.

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beeker
here we go again...

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rufius
Crack pot? Yes. Accurate? Probably not.

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pwnstigator
The 1990->2000 change seemed more impressive than 2000->2010 because we'd come
to expect rapid change after the '90s. So nothing that has happened in the
past 10 years was especially surprising in the way the Internet would be from
a 1986 perspective. (When I first learned about the internet, as a 6-year-old
in '89, I never thought I'd actually be able to use it until college, which
seemed ridiculously far away.)

I think we're accelerating on a linear graph, but decelerating on a log graph,
due to a lack of investment in science and technology compared to previous
eras, and also due to the social and economic catastrophes that were seeded in
the '80s and came to roost in this decade.

The 2000s was a "weak" decade, but still not a bad one, all considered. This
is similar the 1930s were better than most of the 19th century, but seem awful
by comparison to now (or even the '50s). Technological progress has finally
reached a point where even society's "bad" decades (e.g. 2000s) are good.

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quellhorst
2020 will have more social media experts on hacker news to down vote me.

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yannis
Kurzweil is a bit optimistic on timing. His predictions will come through
probably at:

2010 + (2020-2010)*PI

Not sure if I will be around :), or he for that matter!

