“By understanding the information processes underlying life, we are starting to learn to reprogram our biology to achieve the virtual elimination of disease, dramatic expansion of human potential, and radical life extension.”

– Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near

With a wide range of achievements and innovations to his credit, Ray Kurzweil is an interesting person to note. He is a well-known futurist, among many other things. Agree or disagree with his predictions or his optimistic outlook of the way humanity and its technology will merge, Kurzweil has helped define some of the key issues we face in the decades to follow.

Among his books are:

• How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
• Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever
• The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
• The Age of Intelligent Machines
• Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever
• The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
• Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I.

I particularly like the following talk he gave at SETI:

Born on Lincoln’s birthday (another notable human revered for his foresight and desire to attain a better a brighter future), Ray Kurzweil has been described in many ways, including the following:

• “the restless genius” — The Wall Street Journal
• “the ultimate thinking machine” — Forbes
• “an engineer who has radically advanced the fields of speech, text and audio technology” — TED.
• “one of the leading scientists in the field [of] artificial intelligence” — Wired