A lot of people predict the future, most of them don’t have much attention paid to them since they are not famous, but then there are others whose notoriety has allowed them to make predictions people listen to and one of those prophets is Raymond Kurzweil. Not only is Mr. Kurzweil an inventor, author and computer scientist, he is also what is known as a futurist. In the past, he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and also the rapid expansion of the Internet which as we all know has outpaced anything we would have believed. It is hard to imagine a world without the Internet and all this has happened in just a few of decades. He has made some more predictions and there are those who believe most of them are right on spot. One which he stated was the entire world would just about be able to have Internet service by 2019. I think most of us have seen how private companies want to launch different types of craft which would remain over places that currently have no service and these craft would provide the service. I’m not talking just about satellites I am talking about blimp type aircraft and possibly solar powered aircraft.

One of the things he predicted I just can’t see happening, but I certainly don’t want to pit myself against the man who has such a record of success in predicting things. He stated by the year 2020 most diseases will be wiped out. How does he think this is going to happen? I think he’s being a little optimistic when he says that nanobots will be the things we use to combat diseases and they will do a better job than we are doing today using other means. I’m not saying this won’t come true, I just don’t believe it will come true by 2020. He also stated he believes we will be able to reverse engineer someone’s brain to get rid of neurological diseases. Again, I believe this time frame is off, but I guess we will have to wait and see what happens, because we don’t have much choice.

One prediction which he made is truly scary and it is the stuff of sci-fi movies. These are the movies where machines decide they no longer need humans and try to wipe us out. The prediction says by the early 2030s science will have figured out how to copy our brains and put them inside of computers and such. If this happens will we will be able to literally talk to ourselves and get answers? The question is if we have a copy of our brain in a machine will that mean immortality to us? If somebody asked me that question I would say absolutely not, but some people are saying yes. It sort of reminds me of the transporter device in Star Trek. When one thinks about how this device works, if it really worked, it would kill you, because it takes you completely apart and when you are reassembled are you really the same person or just a clone? I think you’re just a clone, but you believe you are the same person even though you are not. I think the machine might believe it is the same person as you, because it has a copy of your brain, but I also believe this doesn’t mean it is the same person.

Mr. Kurzweil believes there will be a huge change in our relationship with nature, somewhere after the year 2045. He thinks everything on earth will be created by computers. I think he means there will be plants which act the same way as real plants and might even be more efficient as will be every other part of nature. Will we have animal life created by computers? I can’t be sure, but I think he is referring to this too. If he is right about this, it might mean alien life, which is more evolved than us would also be living this way which could mean we might even find artificial planets and stars if they are far enough advanced. I for one like nature and I would hate to think it was all going to disappear except for a few parks we would keep around so people could see what things used to be like.

I think we have all heard the prediction by some scientists which state it is inevitable for us to exist much longer, because we are going to be hit with an asteroid. Mr. Kurzweil says we have nothing to worry about, because he sees space technology advancing rapidly and believes in a couple of decades the earth will be fully protected using technology we have developed to stop asteroids in their tracks or to deflect them. It is hard to imagine how we could do this if an asteroid was big enough. Even deflecting it would be a very large job indeed and require enormous amounts of power, but it might be possible if we make some discoveries allowing us to harness this type of power.

One prediction seems very cool to me and it is a prediction that states in a few decades we are going to use virtual reality to replace the workplace and allow us to work from home in a complete office environment which would look just like the office we would have worked in if we went into an office building and worked for a company. Can you imagine some sort of holographic office which had holographic filing cabinets where you can pull out a hologram of a document reading them and making changes to them? There probably would be holograms of the people you would be working with walking around the office just as if they were really there and you would be able to talk to them and they would listen to anything you had to say. As incredible as this sounds it does seem to be headed our way.

He also says by the end of the century computers will be creating planet size computers and eventually there will be enough of these to make the universe into a supercomputer. Nope, can’t buy this one. If you subscribe to the fact we are not alone in the universe, then I think you would have to agree there are probably races out there which are more primitive than us and also more advanced than us. If this is true it would probably mean if Mr. Kurzweil is correct these supercomputers have to already be in space, put there by other races.

Will future generations see these predictions come to pass? I guess at this point I have to say I think some of them will come true, but not all. By the way there a few people who think our solar system is some sort of computer.