Ray Kurzweil

I’m in NYC this weekend and will have a chance to hear Ray Kurzweil speak (heard of Kurzweil keyboards?) Above he appears on TV as a teenager in the 60’s. I won’t spoil it, but you definitely get a sense this kid is going places.

His company Kurzweil Music Systems has been making synthesizers for decades. Their very first unit in ‘84 was actually inspired by a bet with Stevie Wonder over whether a synthesizer could sound like a real piano.

Kurzweil’s Wikipedia bio is fascinating: he’s a grad of MIT, invented the first flatbed scanner, text-to-speech synthesizer, etc. as components of the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind. Stevie bought the first production model in the 70’s which was the start of their lifelong friendship.

More recently, he’s become known as author and “futurist”, writing books on events such as the moment artificial intelligences surpass human beings as the smartest and most capable life forms. Sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. I find it pretty interesting that Kurzweil is one of the few bold enough to make predictions with dates.. and he’s been right, many times.

So, if you have any questions about The Future, send them my way!

A sincere thanks to my good friend and associate Paul Lazarre for the invite.