Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil
Kurzweil in 2017
Born	Raymond Kurzweil (1948-02-12) February 12, 1948 (age 76) Queens, New York City, U.S.
Education	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS)
Occupations	Computer scientist Author Entrepreneur Futurist Inventor
Employer	Google
Known for	His predictions His books, especially The Singularity Is Near The Law of Accelerating Returns
Children	2; including Amy Kurzweil
Awards	Grace Murray Hopper Award (1978) National Medal of Technology (1999)
Website	Official website

Transhumanism
Issues Accelerating change Eradication of suffering Fourth Industrial Revolution Human enhancement Genetic Moral Neuro- Cognitive liberty New eugenics Eugenics Human nature Meliorism Post-politics Post-scarcity
People Andrews Bostrom Church Drexler Freitas FM-2030 Fuller de Garis Gasson Goertzel de Grey Haldane Hanson Harari Harbisson Harris Huxley Hughes Istvan Kurzweil Pico della Mirandola More Osborn Pearce Stolyarov Sandberg Savulescu Sorgner Spencer Stock Teilhard de Chardin Vita-More Warwick
Influential works Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) Looking Backward (1888) The Will to Power (~1901) Daedalus (1924) La raza cósmica (1925) The Phenomenon of Man (1955) The Dialectic of Sex (1970) Metaman (1993) The Hedonistic Imperative (1995) Regeln für den Menschenpark (1997) The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) Citizen Cyborg (2004) The Singularity Is Near (2005) Human Enhancement (2009) Fanged Noumena (2011) The Transhumanist Wager (2013) Sapiens (2014) Homo Deus (2015) The Transhumanist Bill of Rights (2015) The Age of Em (2016) The Precipice (2020) What We Owe the Future (2022) "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" (2023)
Variants Accelerationism Effective Cypherpunk Dataism Extropianism Immortalism Longtermism Postgenderism Posthumanism Russian Cosmism Singularitarianism Technogaianism Technolibertarianism Technological utopianism Techno-progressivism
Related topics Dyson sphere Technologies Emerging Disruptive Hypothetical
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Raymond Kurzweil (/ˈkɜːrzwaɪl/ KURZ-wyle; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health technology, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.

Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States' highest honor in technology, from President Bill Clinton in a White House ceremony. He received the $500,000 Lemelson–MIT Prize for 2001. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for the application of technology to improve human-machine communication. In 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office. He has 21 honorary doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) included Kurzweil as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America" along with other inventors of the past two centuries. Inc. magazine ranked him No. 8 among the "most fascinating" entrepreneurs in the United States and called him "Edison's rightful heir".