The future, according to author and technological soothsayer Ray Kurzweil, is going to be awesome. In his books,
he maps out a future for humanity in which we live forever, supported by a fleet of cleverer-than-human artificial intelligences who solve such trivial problems as hunger and disease, while simultaneously creating ever more intelligent computer minds, racing technological progress forward according to his Law of Accelerated Returns [Telegraph].
Now, Kurzweil is opening a new school, Singularity University, that will gather smart people together and encourage them to bring that future to pass. Kurzweil dreamed up the school with Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, and got backing from Google and NASA; it will be housed on the NASA Ames base in California. The university takes its name from Kurzweil's recent book, The Singularity Is Near, in which he argues that
exponential advances in technology will shortly transform human life ...
