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A Look Back At Kurzweil's Predictions For 2009

Posted by kdawson on from the no-one-expects-the-mule dept.

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.

2 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Automated Telephone Systems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:He got most of it completely wrong by marciot · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.