No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.
Ray KurzweilRead
I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
Interpretation
Inventions should be designed with future trends in mind, not just current conditions.
Ray Kurzweil emphasizes the importance of long-term thinking in the process of invention. He suggests that for an invention to be successful and viable, it must align with the future context and trends of the world once it is completed, rather than the circumstances present at the time of its conception.
In practice
In a technology conference when discussing the future of AI and its implications on society.
No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.
When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer and it took up a whole building. The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. What now fits in your pocket 25 years from now will fit into a blood cell and will again be millions of times more cost effective.
A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.
When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.
Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.
I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
I believe this artificial intelligence is going to be our partner. If we misuse it, it will be a risk. If we use it right, it can be our partner.
From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.
Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.
We did envision that some day the phone would be so small that you could hang it on your ear or even have it embedded under your skin.
The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way... However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there.
A Web site that promotes flow is like a gourmet meal. You start off with the appetizers, move on to the salads and entrees, and build toward dessert. Unfortunately, most sites are built like a cafeteria. You pick whatever you want. That sounds good at first, but soon it doesn't matter what you choose to do. Everything is bland and the same.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.