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A Look Back At Kurzweil's Predictions For 2009
marciot writes "It's interesting to look back at Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 from a decade ago. He was dead on in predicting the ubiquity of portable computers, wireless, the emergence of digital objects, and the rise of privacy concerns. He was a little optimistic in certain areas, predicting the demise of rotating storage and the ubiquity of digital paper a bit earlier than it appears it will actually happen. On the topic of human-computer speech interfaces, though, he seems to be way off." And of course Kurzweil missed 9/11 and the fallout from that. His predictions might have been nearer the mark absent the war on terror.
Kurzweil may not be as far off on the human-computer speech interfaces as you may first think. It's currently focused in a narrow domain right now: automated telephone systems, which are are all pretty much voice activated these days.
A trillion calculations per second on a home computer, eh?
According to wikipedia, the ATI Radeon HD4800 series acheives one teraflop. So, I would say Kurzweil was right on the mark on that one.
The article says $1000 in 1999 dollars. So that'd be nearly $1500 today. I think he nailed this one.
Not sure what article the GP post read, but I thought it was pretty much spot on, and it was NOT all predictable. I challenge people to find a similar article that was anywhere near this close.
Then again, it doesn't surprise me. Kurzweil is very methodical in his predictions. He works the math.
Because everyone thinks that every company is evil.
Because people also get it iced?