Futurist Ray Kurzweil is bullish on solar panels.
Solar power is a great idea. But it is not likely to have the impact that Kurzweil predicts.
According to Wikipedia, Kurzweil’s got a reputation for accurate predictions, but that may change soon (see this lively discussion about the content and validity of the entry). I’ll have to see if he’s got any predictions about Peak Oil.
Here’s an example of the Wikipedia article touting one of Kurzweil’s predictions from The Age of Intelligent Machines (written from 1986 to 1989):
His pronouncement that the world’s foremost militaries would continually rely on more intelligent, computerized weapons instead of, say, increasingly large, low-tech armies, was illustrated spectacularly just a year later during the Gulf War, which served as a showcase for new weapons technologies. The trend towards greater computerization of weapons systems is further demonstrated by the increased use of precision munitions since the publication of Kurzweil’s book. For example, 10% of all U.S. Naval ordnance expended during the Gulf War (1991) were guided weapons.
I’m not sure what percentage of US Naval ordnance fired in the First Gulf War was guided. But I can say that there isn’t much to this prediction.
Take the Harpoon missile, for example. Predicting that “the world’s foremost militaries would continually rely on more intelligent, computerized weapons” in 1989 is not much of a leap when the US Navy had them for quite some time before that.
On April 18 1988, during the late stages of the Iran-Iraq War, the US Navy got into a little dustup with the Iranian Navy. At least one Harpoon missile was fired in that exchange.
The thing is, it was fired at a US warship (the USS Wainwright) by an Iranian vessel. The Harpoon missile was introduced in 1977, and at least a few of them were sold to our friend the Shah before the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
Kurzweil’s an optimist about technology, our future, and things like the technological singularity. I share Bill Joy’s more cautious point of view about the singularity (Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us, Wired, April 2000) — but it’s not something I worry much about anymore.
If you haven’t heard about the coming technological singularity before, it makes for an interesting read. A singularity is a threshold, and what happens on the other side is something science cannot predict (the event horizon of a black hole, beyond which light cannot escape, is a singularity). The technological singularity is a threshold we would cross when, for example, we made a computer that was smart enough to build a better version of itself. Think Terminator or at least a couple of Star Trek episodes.
I guess you could say the best thing about Peak Oil is that it makes it extremely unlikely that robots will take over the planet.
In order to build the number of solar panels that Kurzweil dreams about, you need energy, and other materials. Materials that, like petroleum (which you’ll also need for the plastics), are becoming more scarce.
Kurzweil, optimistic that Peak Oil is not a threat, predicts the singularity will happen around 2030. After that mankind will effectively be immortal. Computing power will be such that you could upload yourself into a computer and live forever. There’s an article in this April’s Wired magazine about Kurzweil.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
He’s 60 now, and determined to keep himself alive until that upload becomes possible.
The reason for his focus on optimal health should be obvious: If the singularity is going to render humans immortal by the middle of this century, it would be a shame to die in the interim. To perish of a heart attack just before the singularity occurred would not only be sad for all the ordinary reasons, it would also be tragically bad luck, like being the last soldier shot down on the Western Front moments before the armistice was proclaimed.
Actually, I can think of one thing that would be worse luck than that. It would be for Kurzweil to have kept himself alive for all that time, and to get his consciousness uploaded into a computer. Then, just as he’s about to embark on his new immortal life, there’s a power outage.
Some people ask if the glass is half full, others if its half empty, I kind of like the person who asks if the glass is.
I read Fantastic Voyage, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near, and they changed my life. I even found some of his lectures on Itunes and I find myself impatiently awaiting his next book.
Recently read another incredible book that I can’t recommend highly enough, especially to all of you who also love Ray Kurzweil’s work. The book is “”My Stroke of Insight”" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. I had heard Dr Taylor’s talk on the TED dot com site and I have to say, it changed my world. It’s spreading virally all over the internet and the book is now a NYTimes Bestseller, so I’m not the only one, but it is the most amazing talk, and the most impactful book I’ve read in years. (Dr T also was named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and Oprah had her on her Soul Series last month and I hear they’re making a movie about her story so you may already have heard of her)
If you haven’t heard Dr Taylor’s TEDTalk, that’s an absolute must. The book is more and deeper and better, but start with the video (it’s 18 minutes). Basically, her story is that she was a 37 yr old Harvard brain scientist who had a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, and thanks to her amazingly loving and kind mother, she eventually fully recovered (and that part of the book detailing how she did it is inspirational).
There’s a lot of learning and magic in the book, but the reason I so highly recommend My Stroke of Insight to this discussion, is because we have powerfully intelligent left brains that are rational, logical, sequential and grounded in detail and time, and then we have our kinesthetic right brains, where we experience intuition and peace and euphoria. Now that Kurzweil has got us taking all those vitamins and living our best “”Fantastic Voyage”" , the absolute necessity is that we read My Stroke of Insight and learn from Dr Taylor how to achieve balance between our right and left brains. Enjoy!