Ray Kurzweil - keynote

Paul seems to be under the impression I might have something to say about this session - alright then I will....fan-bloody-tastic! The session topic was The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st century: the impact on education and society. Who needs a crystal ball when you've got Ray Kurzweil! I do enjoy a good exponential graph and there were lots of these. He demoed a hand held print to voice camera which was very, very impressive - take a photo of a page, a sign, a menu, a label etc etc and the device will read it to you.
Talked a little about the past - always interesting to do comparators - I know we probably all know this but he did the MIT computer example which is always fun - 30 years ago, cost $11 million, size of small room - that machine was 1000 times less powerful than the technology within a mobile phone.
IT has a 50% deflation rate and will be the dominant force of economy by 2020 - this suggests a shrinking economy unless we consume at least double - but we don't expect it to shrink....
Talked a bit about the biotechnology revolution - intersection of biology and IT and nanotechnology for diagnosis and treatment.
Interesting (and possibly quite threatening) proposals around "virtual attendance" - already MIT make all course materials available for free over the web, Berkeley record and publish lectures for free, combine that with forthcoming augmented reality and VR and what is it that HE institutions do again???
Talked about reverse engineering the brain - I really liked the elegance of the complexity hypothesis he discussed (cos I am a bit sad at times) - we need to be smarter to understand how our brain works, and in being smarter the brain becomes more complex and so we need to be even smarter to understand its new level of complexity ie can a complex system be so complex that it can't understand its own complexity? - see why Paul's brain hurt? just cos I said I liked it didn't mean i didn't also get a headache....
Also demoed an auto language translating phone - you say stuff in your own language and the person on the other end can choose what language to hear it in - I wonder if they can do English to US?

Kurzweil Predictions (bearing in mind he's been pretty accurate for the past 30 years)

2010

• computers (as a seperate entity) disappear
• images written direct to retinas
• ubiquitous high bandwidth
• tiny electronics embedded in environments, clothes, glasses
• full imersion visual/audio virtual reality
• augmented real reality
• interaction with virtual personalities as a primary interface
• effective inter-language technologies

Yes that's right, 2010 - that is not a typo - there is already a car in development with built in augmented reality sat nav, ie rather than have an in car nav screen, the system overlays the technology to reality, projecting the navigation directions virtually onto the road ahead.

2029

• reverse engineering of the brain achieved
• computing devices pass the Turing test
• nonbio intelligence combines
• nonbio intelligence grows exponentially, bio intelligence stabilises
• full immersion VR - choose to be someone else, "experience beamers"
• nan-neural implants -non-invasive diagnosis and treatment

OK - stick with me on this one - in 15 years time, for every extra year any of us live biotech will enable us to add an additional year to our life expectancy....