Great Ray Kurzweil Interview
Dell has put up a new site called Motherboard that I don’t totally understand the point of, but I very much enjoyed the interview with Ray Kurzweil.
Kurzweil has always been a hero of mine ever since I first hear of him when I was at MIT in the mid-1980’s. I’ve never worked with Ray although I got to know his business partner Aaron Kleiner near the end of my time in Boston. I’ve observed Ray from afar, read his books, and thought about his thinking. I find all of it, including the notion of the Singularity and his goal of living long enough to be able to live forever, very compelling.
Watching the interview I realized that I’ve been out of the flow of an area that is really interesting to me. I have no idea how much, if any, will show up on this blog (or in our investing), but look for more of it.
He is a great thinker indeed. Check out his TED presentations.
George, What's your favorite Kurzweil presentation from TED? Can you post a link?
He's always been an interesting cat. I'm not sure I want to live forever, but it's nice to know that some is working on making 'The Matrix' a reality for the rest of us! I wish he would stick to keyboard stuff. Helping Stevie Wonder make another 'Songs in the key of life'? That would be a real contribution!
I saw Ray peak at MIT this past Wednesday. I had heard the ideas he spoke about before, most of which are mentioned in the video, but I was impressed, perhaps because he also talked briefly about simple things such as building a team when starting a company.
For someone of his brilliance and creative capacity, he was very much 'here' and came off just as a thoughtful person when speaking to him. This fact was interesting to me because he has seemingly garnered a large number of harsh critics that have said he has no sense of 'objective reality' and painted him as some sort of megalomaniac.
But, if you have big ideas, and evidence to back them up, no matter who you are, people will first ignore you, then resist, and then fight vehemently. But, then you win.
Very well said.
For showing up in your investing, as he said, there will be some thousands of little steps, and you may invest in some of those, whether they appear at the time to be part of 'the singularity' or not.
I completely agree.
Great post. Ray is an amazing man and his thoughts are almost stubbornly well-founded. I am definitely interested to see where he goes from here.
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