Ray Kurzweil Popular Books

Ray Kurzweil Biography & Facts

Raymond Kurzweil (, KURZ-wyle; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health technology, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology. Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States' highest honor in technology, from then President Bill Clinton in a White House ceremony. He was the recipient of the $500 000 Lemelson–MIT Prize for 2001. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for the application of technology to improve human-machine communication. In 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, established by the U.S. Patent Office. He has received 21 honorary doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) included Kurzweil as one of 16 "revolutionaries who made America" along with other inventors of the past two centuries. Inc. magazine ranked him No. 8 among the "most fascinating" entrepreneurs in the United States and called him "Edison's rightful heir". Life, inventions, and business career Early life Kurzweil grew up in Queens, New York City. He attended NYC Public Education Kingsbury Elementary School PS188. He was born to secular Jewish parents who had emigrated from Austria just before the onset of World War II. He was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing. His Unitarian church had the philosophy of many paths to the truth – his religious education consisted of studying a single religion for six months before moving on to the next. His father, Fredric, was a concert pianist, a noted conductor, and a music educator. His mother, Hannah was a visual artist. He has one sibling, his sister Enid. Kurzweil decided at the age of five that he wanted to be an inventor. As a young boy, Kurzweil had an inventory of parts from various construction toys he had been given and old electronic gadgets he'd collected from neighbors. In his youth, Kurzweil was an avid reader of science fiction literature. At the age of eight, nine, and ten, he read the entire Tom Swift Jr. series. At the age of seven or eight, he built a robotic puppet theater and robotic game. He was involved with computers by the age of 12 (in 1960), when only a dozen computers existed in all of New York City, and built computing devices and statistical programs for the predecessor of Head Start. At the age of fourteen, Kurzweil wrote a paper detailing his theory of the neocortex. His parents were involved with the arts, and he is quoted in the documentary Transcendent Man as saying that the household always produced discussions about the future and technology. Kurzweil attended Martin Van Buren High School. During class, he often held onto his class textbooks to seemingly participate, but instead, focused on his own projects which were hidden behind the book. His uncle, an engineer at Bell Labs, taught young Kurzweil the basics of computer science. In 1963, at age 15, he wrote his first computer program. He created pattern-recognition software that analyzed the works of classical composers, and then synthesized its own songs in similar styles. In 1965 he was invited to appear on the CBS television program I've Got a Secret, where he performed a piano piece that was composed by a computer he also had built. Later that year, he won first prize in the International Science Fair for the invention; Kurzweil's submission to Westinghouse Talent Search of his first computer program alongside several other projects resulted in him being one of its national winners, which allowed him to be personally congratulated by President Lyndon B. Johnson during a White House ceremony. These activities collectively impressed upon Kurzweil the belief that nearly any problem could be overcome. Mid-life While in high school, Kurzweil had corresponded with Marvin Minsky and was invited to visit him at MIT, which he did. Kurzweil also visited Frank Rosenblatt at Cornell.He obtained a B.S. in computer science and literature in 1970 at MIT. He went to MIT to study with Marvin Minsky. He took all of the computer programming courses (eight or nine) offered at MIT in the first year and a half. In 1968, during his second year at MIT, Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers submitted by each student applicant. Around that time he sold the company to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000 (roughly $748,000 in 2020 dollars) plus royalties.In 1974, Kurzweil founded Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system, a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Before that time, scanners had only been able to read text written in a few fonts. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them aloud. However, this device required the invention of two enabling technologies—the CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer. Development of these technologies was completed at other institutions such as Bell Labs, and on January 13, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a news conference headed by him and the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind. Called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the device covered an entire tabletop. Kurzweil's next major business venture began in 1978, when Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. LexisNexis was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload paper legal and news documents onto its nascent online databases. Kurzweil sold his Kurzweil Computer Products to Xerox, where it was known as Xerox Imaging Systems, later known as Scansoft, and he functioned as a consultant for Xerox until 1995. In 1999, Visioneer, Inc. acquired ScanSoft from Xerox to form a new public company with ScanSoft as the new company-wide name. Scansoft merged with Nuance Communications in 2005. Kurzweil's next business venture was in the realm of electronic music technology. After a 1982 meeting with Stevie Wonder, in which the latter lamented the divide in capabilities and qualities between .... Discover the Ray Kurzweil popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ray Kurzweil books.

Best Seller Ray Kurzweil Books of 2024

  • The Fourth Age synopsis, comments

    The Fourth Age

    Byron Reese

    “The Fourth Age not only discusses what the rise of A.I. will mean for us, it also forces readers to challenge their preconceptions. And it manages to do all this in a way that is ...

  • Nada que temer synopsis, comments

    Nada que temer

    Cristian Barría Huidobro & Sergio Rosales Guerrero

    NADA QUE TEMER es una invitación a dudar de la veracidad y contundencia de los relatos apocalípticos acerca del presente y futuro de las máquinas en nuestras vidas. La idea de que ...

  • Future Minds synopsis, comments

    Future Minds

    Richard Yonck

    For readers of Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking, the book readers have acclaimed as "A megacomprehensive outlook at intelligence as convincing as it is surprising" and "A ...

  • Heart of the Machine synopsis, comments

    Heart of the Machine

    Richard Yonck & Rana El Kaliouby

    For Readers of Ray Kurzweil and Michio Kaku, a New Look at the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence Imagine a robotic stuffed animal that can read and respond to a child’s emoti...

  • To Be a Machine synopsis, comments

    To Be a Machine

    Mark O'Connell

    “This gonzojournalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley technoutopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” New York Times Book Review (E...

  • The Singularity Is Near synopsis, comments

    The Singularity Is Near

    Ray Kurzweil

    “Startling in scope and bravado.” Janet Maslin, The New York Times“Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.” Los Angeles Times“Elaborate, smart and persuasi...

  • Life synopsis, comments

    Life

    John Brockman

    The newest addition to John Brockman’s Edge.org series explores life itself, bringing together the world’s leading biologists, geneticists, and evolutionary theoristsincluding Rich...

  • Thinking Machines synopsis, comments

    Thinking Machines

    Luke Dormehl

    A fascinating look at Artificial Intelligence, from its humble Cold War beginnings to the dazzling future that is just around the corner.When most of us think about Artificial Inte...

  • The Singularity Is Nearer synopsis, comments

    The Singularity Is Nearer

    Ray Kurzweil

    The noted inventor and futurist's successor to his landmark book The Singularity Is Near explores how technology will transform the human race in the decades to comeSince it was fi...

  • Mindscan synopsis, comments

    Mindscan

    Robert J. Sawyer

    Hugo Awardwinning author Robert J. Sawyer is back with Mindscan, a pulsepounding, mindexpanding standalone novel, rich with his signature philosophical and ethical speculations, al...

  • Dark Aeon synopsis, comments

    Dark Aeon

    Joe Allen & Stephen K. Bannon

    Humanity Is Consumed by Relentless Transformation   Like a thief in the night, artificial intelligence has inserted itself into our lives. It makes important decisions for us ...