Knowledge and Information Technology Symposium
Session One
Edith Kurzweil :
Good morning, I'm Edith Kurzweil, the editor of
Partisan Review.
I will introduce today's meeting.
"Isn't
Partisan Review
going somewhat beyond its usual realm by
organizing a conference on 'Knowledge and Technology'," asked one of
our closest friends, someone I expect to be here.
"Yes,"
I answered,
when you think of the words in their narrow sense - as belonging to
the other of what
C.
P. Snow called the two cultures. But
no,
when you
consider our larger mission, which is to address and explore trends and
changes in the way our societies will function, in how our thinking
already has been, and will be, altered, and how computers may well
replace and enhance our own brains.
This morning, Ray Kurzweil will tell you about all of that, and about the
eventual effect of our inevitable reliance on computers.
In
his book
The Age
of Spiritual Machines,
Ray has predicted what advanced technology may
enable us to do during the coming years. Ray is here today not because he
is my nephew, but because he is a genius. And due to his current work on
voice recognition, and his other inventions, he is the best person to look into
what this technology will mean in the future he foresees for us all.
A few days ago, in the
New Republic,
I came upon Robert Lucky's
argument that "technologies have a way of losing their dominance." He
maintains that in the last century railroads had their transformative
effect, as had the invention of the telegraph which, eventually, was
replaced by the telephone. And yet, Lucky seems to agree with Ray that
Moore's Law-that technology doubles every eighteen months-so far
has held true. Still, after questioning whether computers could stop get–
ting better, he thinks that they will "endure in some form through the
next century." Ray Kurzweil, however, after selling the last of his com–
panies about a year ago, and allegedly retiring, has started three new
projects (he'll probably tell you about some of them), thus proving
Forbes
correct in calling him the "ultimate thinking machine."
