Changes in technology and industry is a common theme
at the NAB Show, but for Ray Kurzweil, many of those
discussions underestimate the impact these changes have on
existing practices.
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Ray Kurzweil
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Opening his Tuesday keynote presentation, “Acceleration
of Technology in the 21st Century,” digital technology guru
and futurist Kurzweil said, “I know there is a lot of concern
about changing business models in the broadcast world,
and I want to put that into the context of an escalating,
accelerating and exponentially growing
paradigm shift in information technology.”
Kurzweil welcomed the new technologies
broadcasters are embracing, but he used the
example of the music industry trying to
stand by physical distribution models and
resisting the advent of digital distribution as
a cautionary tale.
“They were hoping that the Internet
would go away,” he said, “but there is
no way to establish a business model
and the social contract needed to respect
intellectual property unless it is a business
model that the public respects.”
He went on to describe the exponential growth of
knowledge and its resulting technological developments,
and how this trend has resulted in more communication
opportunities, extended health and better lives for everyone.
“For example, the telephone took 50 years to become
adopted by a quarter of the population,” he
said, “but the cell phone did that in seven
years.”
It’s all about understanding the tools
to which we have so quickly become
accustomed. “Anybody can change the
world,” he said. “Ten years ago most people
could not use search engines ... but now that
sounds like ancient history.”
Among other future technologies,
Kurzweil painted a picture of the advent of
nanotechnoloy, describing neural implants
that could be distributed to billions of
points in the brain to provide a full-immersion virtual reality
incorporating all of the senses and an intimate connection to
diverse forms of nonbiological intelligence.
A Q&A session hosted by Entertainment Technology
Center Executive Producer Donald Marinelli followed the
presentation.