Kurzweil Argues Technology Improves The World, Compares DNA to Code (geekwire.com)

Futurist Ray Kurzweil told a Seattle conference specific ways in which technology is already improving our lives. For example, while there's a general perception that the world's getting worse, "What's actually happening is our information about what's wrong in the world is getting better. A century ago, there would be a battle that wiped out the next village, you'd never even hear about it." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes two of Kurzweil's other interesting insights: "We're only crowded because we've crowded ourselves into cities. Try taking a train trip across the United States, or Europe or Asia or anywhere in the world. Ninety-nine percent of the land is not used... we don't want to use it because you don't want to be out in the boondocks if you don't have people to work and play with. That's already changing now that we have some level of virtual communication..."

[And on the potential of human genomics] "It's not just collecting what is basically the object code of life that is expanding exponentially. Our ability to understand it, to reverse-engineer it, to simulate it, and most importantly to reprogram this outdated software is also expanding exponentially. Genes are software programs. It's not a metaphor. They are sequences of data. But they evolved many years ago, many tens of thousands of years ago..."

Comments

Re:Who is Kurzweil? Why should I care?

[Mats Svensson]

Who are you to ask us that question?
Who are you, and why should we care?
What is the point, why are we here?

Re:Who is Kurzweil? Why should I care?

[DrXym]

He pops pills thinking it will make him immortal, he promotes ideas like the "singularity" where people will upload their minds into computers and other such nonsense. The hubris is so great he'll probably die by having a heart attack and his autopilot Tesla will plough straight into picture of a sunset.