1970 – MIT grad Ray Kurzweil pioneered his first step into artificial intelligence with pattern recognition which he defined as teaching computers to recognize abstract patterns, a capability that dominates human thought. Innovations produced by the Kurzweil companies have become many of the technologies we use throughout the library and throughout our daily lives.
1975- Kurzweil invented the first flat bed scanner
1976 – The Kurzweil Reading Machine is the first machine to read print documents aloud
(Trexler Library’s Kurzweil Reading Machine is located in the small B lab)
1978 – A commercial Kurzweil Reading Machine is used by LexisNexis to build their database
1984 – Kurzweil created the first computer music keyboard which recreated the sound of the grand piano
1987 – Kurzweil marketed the first speech recognition software
1990 – Kurzweil’s first book is published, The Age of Intelligent Machines, and is awarded Most Outstanding Computer Science book of 1990 by the Association of American Publishers
Innovations in technology motivate societal change. In The Age of Intelligent Machines, Kurzweil predicted:
- Dominance of the WWW
- A computer as world chess champion (IBM’s Deep Blue in 1998)
- Smart weapons
- Wireless networking
- Virtual meetings
- Increased globalization due to advances in communication technology
Kurzweil seems to be the Nostradamus for our age issuing fascinating futurist theories.
Additional resources:
Kurzweil, R. (1990). The Age of Intelligent Machines. Cambridge: MIT Press.
A level Main Coll. 006.3 K96ag c1990
Kurzweil, R. (1987). The Age Of Intelligent Machines [Videotape].
Cambridge: distributed by MIT Press.
A level AV Alcove 006.3 A265o c1987
The following articles are available full text from the library’s subscription databases:
Kurzweil, R. (Jan 2008). The coming merging of mind and machine. Scientific American Special Edition, 18, issue 1, 20-25.
Kurzweil, R. (Mar/Apr 2006). Reinventing Humanity: The future of machine-human intelligence. Futurist, 40, issue 2, 39-46.
Kurzweil, R. (Sept 2006). Robots R Us. Popular Science, 269, issue 3, 54-57.
Kurzweil, R. (Mar 2007). Let’s not go back to nature. New Scientist, 193, 19+
e-newsletter from the Kurzweil Companies: http://www.kurzweilai.net/
Sources: http://www.kurzweiltech.com
