The End of Handicaps
By: Ray Kurzweil
From: eSchool News - July 2003 - Vol. 6, No. 7, P. 40

In an address to the CSUN 18th Annual Conference on "Technology and Persons
with Disabilities," futurist and National Medal of Technology recipient Ray
Kurzweil presented his vision of the sweeping technological changes he
expects to take place over the next few decades--in fact, he argued that some
of these changes have already begun. Kurzweil estimates that the rate of
progress doubles every decade--by that reckoning, 21st century progress will
be roughly 1,000 times greater than 20th century progress. Kurzweil envisions
ubiquitous computers with always-on Internet connections, systems that allow
people to fully immerse themselves in virtual environments, and artificial
intelligence embedded into Web sites by 2010. The futurist also projects that
3D molecular computing will be a reality by the time Moore's Law reaches its
limits, while nanotechnology will emerge by the 2020s. Kurzweil predicts that
the human brain will have been fully reverse-engineered by 2020, which will
result in computers with enough power to equal human intelligence. He
forecasts the emergence of systems that provide subtitles for deaf people
around the world, as well as listening systems also geared toward
hearing-impaired users, while blind people should be able to take advantage
of pocket-sized reading devices in a few years. Kurzweil believes that people
with spinal cord injuries will be able to resume fully functional lives by
2020, either through the development of exoskeletal robotic systems or a
technique to mend severed nerve pathways, possibly by wirelessly transmitting
nerve impulses to muscles. All of these developments are expected to reach
maturity and culminate in enhanced human intelligence by 2029. 

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