Ray Kurzweil speaks

I had occasion recently to see Ray Kurzweil speak, at RSA2007. I was impressed by his analysis and excited by many of his predictions. Now, the TED conference is putting videos online, and one is of Mr. Kurzweil.

You can see the video here. This is a variant of the speech I originally saw. I think Mr. Kurzweil has a very large slide deck, and probably doesn't use all of his material in any one speech.

One may or may not agree with all of Ray's predictions, but I think a key point is that not only is technological change continuing, its pace is increasing. And the ramifications for societal and cultural change will only become more pervasive. It seems to me that if it is true that the pace of change is increasing, and societal and cultural changes will continue to manifest, then we are in for an interesting and challenging next 20-30 years.

One extremely simple example. I can now watch Ray's video anytime I want, and link to it with this blog, and watch other similar videos quite easily. Just sitting here at my dining room table, using broadband cable and a decent recent vintage notebook PC, I have the opportunity to learn so much from so many.

Here is www.kurzweilai.net where more information is available, and it has an RSS feed.