by Ray Kurzweil
3 Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 108.
4 Ralph Merkle’s comments on nanotechnology can be found in an overview at his web site at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
5 Richard Feynman presented these ideas on December 29, 1959, at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). His talk was first published in the February 1960 issue of Cal Tech’s Engineering and Science. This article is available online at
6 Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986). The book is also accessible online from the Xerox nanotechnology site
7 Eric Drexler, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1992).
8 According to Nanothinc’s web site
9 Richard Smalley’s publications and work on nanotechnology can be found at the web site for the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University
10 For information on the use of nanotechnology in creating IBM’s corporate logo, read Faye Flam, “Tiny Instrument Has Big Implications.” Knight-Ridder/Tribute News Service, August 11, 1997, p. 811K7204.
11 Dr. Jeffrey Sampsell at Texas Instruments has written a white paper summarizing research on micromirrors, available at
12 A description of the flying machines can be found at the web site of the MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) and Fluid Dynamics Research Group at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
13 Xerox’s nanotechnology research is described in Brian Santo, “Smart Matter Program Embeds Intelligence by Combining Sensing, Actuation, Computation—Xerox Builds on Sensor Theory for Smart Materials.” EETimes (March 23, 1998):129. More information on this research can be found at the web site for the Smart Matter Research Group at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center at
14 For information on the use of nanotechnology in creating the nanoguitar, read Faye Flam, “Tiny Instrument Has Big Implications.” Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service.
15 Learn more about the Chelyabinsk region by visiting the web site dedicated to helping the people living in that area at
16 For more about the story behind Space War, see “A History of Computer Games,” Computer Gaming World (November 1991): 16-26; and Eric S. Raymond, ed., New Hacker’s Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). Space War was developed by Steve Russell in 1961 and implemented by him on the PDP-1 at MIT a year later.
17 Medical Learning Company is a joint venture between the American Board of Family Practice (an organization that certifies the sixty thousand family practice physicians in the United States) and Kurzweil Technologies. The goal of the company is to develop educational software for continuing medical education of physicians as well as other markets. A key aspect of the technology will include an interactive simulated patient that can be examined, interviewed, and treated.
18 Hall’s Utility Fog concept is described in J. Storrs Hall, “Utility Fog Part 1,” Extropy, issue no. 13 (vol. 6, no. 2), third quarter 1994; and J. Storrs Hall, “Utility Fog Part 2,” Extropy, issue no. 14 (vol. 7, no. 1), first quarter 1995. Also see Jim Wilson, “Shrinking Micromachines: A New Generation of Tools Will Make Molecule-Size Machines a Reality.” Popular Mechanics 174, no. 11 (November 1997): 55-58.
19 Mark Yim, “Locomotion with a Unit-Modular Reconfigurable Robot,” Stanford University Technical Report STAN-CS-TR-95-1536.
20 Joseph Michael, UK Patent #94004227.2.
21 For examples of early “prurient” text publications, see A History of Erotic Literature by Patrick J. Kearney (Hong Kong, 1982); and History Laid Bare by Richard Zachs (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
22 Upside Magazine, April 1998.
23 For example, the “TFUI” (Touch-and-Feel User Interface) from pixis, as used in their Diva and Space Sirens series of CD-ROMs.
24 From “Who Needs Jokes? Brain Has a Ticklish Spot,” Malcolme W Browne, New York Times, March 10, 1998. Also see I. Fried (with C. L. Wilson, K. A. MacDonald, and E. J. Behnke), “Electric Current Stimulates Laughter,” Scientific Correspondence 391: 650, 1998.
25 K. Blum et al., “Reward Deficiency Syndrome,” American Scientist, March-April, 1996.
26 Brain Generated Music is a patented technology of NeuroSonics, a small company in Baltimore, Maryland. The founder, CEO, and principal developer of the technology is Dr. Geoff Wright, who is head of computer music at Peabody Conservatory.
27 For details about Dr. Benson’s work, see his book The Relaxation Response (New York: Avon, 1990).
28 “ ‘God Spot’ Is Found in Brain,” Sunday Times (Britain), November 2, 1997.
CHAPTER 8: 1999
1 The U.S. Federal Government Gateway for Year 2000 Information Directories, at
2 David Cope talks about his EMI program in his book Experiments in Musical Intelligence (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1996). EMI is also discussed in Margaret Boden “Artificial Genius,” Discover magazine, October 1996.
3 For more about the Improvisor program, see Margaret Boden, “Artificial Genius,” Discover magazine, October 1996. The article addresses the question of who is the actual creator of original art produced by computer programs—the developer of the program or the program itself?
4 Laurie Flynn, “Program Proves Bad Puns Not Limited to Humans,” New York Times, January 3, 1998.
5 “ParaMind copies any text you type or paste into its screen and systematically merges your text with new words. The words are all related, such as adjectives related to sight, or adverbs related to walking: In the text that you type or paste in, a word or two is selected where these new words will fit in, in the way that you want. The result is a new listing of your idea changed in several fascinating ways.” From the ParaMind Brainstorming Software web page at
6 More information on BRUTUS. 1 Story Generator and its inventors can be found at
7 Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet (RKCP) is a software program designed by Ray Kurzweil and developed by Kurzweil Technologies. You can download a copy of the program at
8 For examples of Mutator’s artistic creations, visit the web site of Computer Artworks at
Karl Sims has written several articles about his work, includ
ing “Artificial Evolution for Computer Graphics,” Computer Graphics 25, no. 4 ( July 1991): 319-328.
9 Drawings and paintings by Aaron, Harold Cohen’s cybernetic artist, have hung at London’s Tate Gallery, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Washington Capitol Children’s Museum, and others.
10 Harold Cohen, “How to Draw Three People in a Botanical Garden,” AAAI-88, Proceedings of the Seventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1988, pp. 846-855. Some of the implications of Aaron are discussed in Pamela McCorduck, “Artificial Intelligence : An Aperçu,” Daedalus, Winter 1988, pp. 65-83.
11 A list of sites on Cohen’s Aaron can be found at
12 Raymond Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). Also see the publications section at the web site for Kurzweil Technologies at
13 Venture capital refers to funds available for investment by organizations that have raised pools of capital specifically to invest in companies, primarily new ventures. Angel capital refers to funds available for investment by networks of wealthy investors who invest in start-up companies. In the United States, both venture and angel capital have emphasized high-technology investments.
14 For a comprehensive list of available speech- and face-recognition products and research projects, go to The Face Recognition Home Page at
15 For an excellent overview of this subject, see “The Intelligent Vehicle Initiative: Advancing ‘Human-Centered’ Smart Vehicles,” by Cheryl Little of the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. This article is available through the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center web page at
16 For example, Voice XpressPlus, from the dictation division of Lernout & Hauspie (formerly Kurzweil Applied Intelligence), combines large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognition for dictation, with natural-language understanding for commands. Continuous speech recognition without natural-language understanding (as of 1998) is also available from Dragon System’s Naturally Speaking and IBM’s ViaVoice.
17 Examples of translation products include Langenscheidt’s T1 Professional from Gesellschaft fur Multilinguale Systeme, a division of Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products; Globalink Power Translator; and SYSTRAN Classic for Windows.
18 Duncan Bythell, The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry During the Industrial Revolution, p. 70. There are also a number of web sites exploring both the original Luddite history and the contemporary neo-Luddite movement. For one example, see the web page Luddites On-Line at
19 Ben J. Wattenberg, ed., The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997.
20 Ben J. Wattenberg, ed., The Statistical History of the United States from Colonial Times to the Present.
21 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997.
22 Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber Manifesto was published in both the New York Times and the Washington Post in September 1995. The full text of the document is available on numerous web pages, including:
CHAPTER 9: 2009
1 A consortium of eighteen manufacturers of cellular telephones and other portable electronic devices is developing a technology called Bluetooth, which provides wireless communications within a radius of about ten meters, at a data rate of 700 to 900 kilobits per second. Bluetooth is expected to be introduced in late 1999 and will initially have a cost of about $20 per unit. This cost is expected to decline rapidly after introduction. Bluetooth will allow personal communications and electronics devices to communicate with one another.
2 Technology such as Bluetooth (see note 1) will allow computer components such as computing units, keyboards, pointing devices, printers, etc. to communicate with one another without the use of cables.
3 Microvision of Seattle has a product called a Virtual Retina Display (VRD) that projects images directly onto the user’s retinas while allowing the user to see the normal environment. The Microvision VRD is currently expensive and is sold primarily to the military for use by pilots. Microvision’s CEO Richard Rutkowski projects a consumer version built on a single chip before the year 2000.
4 Projecting from the speed of personal computers, a 1998 personal computer can perform about 150 million instructions per second for about $1,000. By doubling every twelve months, we get a projection of 150 million multiplied by 211 (2,048) = 300 billion instructions per second in 2009. Instructions are less powerful than calculations, so calculations per second will be around 100 billion. However, projecting from the speed of neural computers, a 1997 neural computer provided about 2 billion neural connection calculations per second for around $2,000, which is 1 billion calculations per $1,000. By doubling every twelve months, we get a projection of 1 billion times 212 (4,096) = 4 trillion calculations per second in 2009. By 2009, computers will routinely combine both types of computations, so if even 25 percent of the computations are of the neural connection calculation type, the estimate of 1 trillion calculations per second for $1,000 of computing in 2009 is reasonable.
5 The most powerful supercomputers are twenty thousand times more powerful than a $1,000 personal computer. With $1,000 personal computers providing about 1 trillion calculations per second (particularly of the neural-connection type of calculation) in 2009, the more powerful supercomputers will provide about 20 million billion calculations per second, which is about equal to the estimated processing power of the human brain.
6 As of this writing, there has been much publicity surrounding the work of Dr. Judah Folkman of Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and the effects of angiogenesis inhibitors. In particular, the combination of Endostatin and Angiostatin, bioengineered drugs that inhibit the reproduction of capillaries, has been remarkably effective in mice. Although there has been a lot of commentary pointing out that drugs that work in mice often do not work in humans, the degree to which this drug combination worked in these laboratory animals was remarkable. Drugs that work this well in mice often do work in humans.
See “HOPE IN THE LAB: A Special Report. A Cautious Awe Greets Drugs That Eradicate Tumors in Mice,” New York Times, May 3, 1998.
CHAPTER 10: 2019
1 See note 3 of chapter 9, “2009,” on the Microvision Virtual Retina Display.
2 A 1997 neural computer provided about 2 billion neural-connection calculations per second for $2,000. By doubling twenty-two times by the year 2019, that comes to about 8 million billion calculations per second for $2,000 and 16 million billion calculations per second for $4,000. In 2020, we get 16 million billion calculations per second for $2,000.
3 With each human brain providing about 1016 calculations per second and an estimated 10 billion (1010) persons, we get an estimated 1026 calculations per second for all human brains on Earth. There are about 100 million computers in the world in 1998. A conservative estimate for 2019 would be a billion computers equal to the then state-of-the-art for $1,000 machines. Thus the total computing power of the computers equals one billion (109) times 1016 = 1025 calculations per second, which is 10 percent of 1026.
CHAPTER 11: 2029
1 With each human brain providing about 1016 calculations per second and an estimated 10 billion (1010) persons, we get an estimated 1026 calculations per second for all human brains on Eart
h. There are about 100 million computers in the world in 1998. A (very) conservative estimate for 2029 would be a billion computers equal to the then state-of-the-art for $1,000 machines. This is actually too conservative, but still sufficient for our purposes. Thus the total computing power of the computers equals one billion (109) times 1019 = 1028 calculations per second, which is one hundred times the processing power of all human brains (which is 1026 calculations per second).