Ray Kurzweil's Slippery Futurism

wjousts writes "Well-known futurist Ray Kurzweil has made many predictions about the future in his books The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) and The Singularity is Near (2005), but how well have his predictions held up now that we live 'in the future'? IEEE Spectrum has a piece questioning the Kurzweil's (self proclaimed) accuracy. Quoting: 'Therein lie the frustrations of Kurzweil's brand of tech punditry. On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity. And most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable. Yet he continues to be taken seriously enough as an oracle of technology to command very impressive speaker fees at pricey conferences, to author best-selling books, and to have cofounded Singularity University, where executives and others are paying quite handsomely to learn how to plan for the not-too-distant day when those disappearing computers will make humans both obsolete and immortal.'"

Comments

May I Introduce:

[Anonymous Coward]

"continues to be taken seriously enough as an oracle of technology to command very impressive speaker fees at pricey conferences, to author best-selling books"

Sarah Palin.

Yours In Anchorage,
Kilgore Trout.

now for -- the rest of the story..

[Thud457]

Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown... the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space?

-- Criswell


oh, wait, you said Kurzweil...

Re:Claims made about the future were wrong

[Crazyswedishguy]

News at 11.

How do you know? It's only 5:30. Is that you, Kurzweil?

Re:The man is a hack.

[Samantha Wright]

I don't think you said that loudly enough.

Re:Optimistic predictions

[craash420]

Like GWB said, "if I said it once, I said it a Brazilian times... I hate exaggeration."

There, that's better.

Re:Any universities offering courses in Futurism?

[gmhowell]

I failed Ranting in college.

But given that you have a Slashdot uid, you are enrolled in an excellent remedial program.

Re:Any universities offering courses in Futurism?

[mcgrew]

You must not be wearing the wrong sized glasses today.