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Today, we're backing up our data. Soon, we'll be backing up our brains.
"Everything is a gateway to the cloud" ~Ray Kurzweil |
Today, I had an incredible opportunity to attend
TEDx SiliconAlley at Terminal 5 in New York City, themed "Rise Of The Machines." Curated by
Chris Grayson, the day was filled with amazing speakers.
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| "Fireside chat" between Ray Kurzweil and Juan Enriquez |
Personally, I came to hear and draw
Ray Kurzweil. This man, who has 19
honorary doctorate degrees aside from the long list of inventions, entrepreneurships, books and other notabilities, has been fascinating me for years. His insight into the
exponential growth of technological innovation enables him to accurately predict the future, time and time again. According to Ray, development of intelligence is the next logical step in evolution, which, in turn, breeds artificial intelligence and posthumanism.
Ray Kurzweil's talk today was followed by a "fireside" chat with
Juan Enriquez, who, to quote Wikipedia, "is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the economic and political impacts of life sciences." Juan also gave a talk earlier, a remarkable talk. He reminded us that historically, tattoos are permanent identifiers and storytellers. Today, by the virtue of sharing our personal data electronically, we have digital identifiers and stories. So Juan asked: what if Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc., are our electronic tattoos?
"Does Google make you immortal?" And
"What if Andy was wrong? What if it's longer than 15 minutes?" (referring to fame, of course, and the notorious Andy Warhol prediction: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.")
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| "Human intelligence is based on recognizing patterns" ~Ray Kurzweil |
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