-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:43 AM To: [email protected] Subject: An Evening with Ray Kurzweil - May 11 at the Coolidge
Dear Professor Mindell, Thought the following would be of interest. Hope you can join us and will spread the word to your colleagues, students, and others whom you think would be interested. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like a flyer for posting. Many thanks! Kind regards, Cheryl White Coolidge Corner Theatre 617/699-7285 [email protected] __________________ The Coolidge Corner Theatre concludes the 2008-2009 season of its acclaimed Science on Screen series on Monday, May 11 at 7:00 p.m. with a special program, An Evening with Ray Kurzweil. The celebrated futurist, inventor and entrepreneur will give a multimedia presentation based on his best-selling book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology and will show a trailer of the upcoming film of the same name. Audience members will also get a sneak peek at Transcendent Man, director Barry Ptolemy's documentary charting Kurzweil's journey to bring the ideas from The Singularity to a worldwide audience. Kurzweil will lead a question-and-answer session following his talk. According to Kurzweil, the onset of the 21st century is the beginning of an era in which the very nature of what is means to be human will be both enriched and challenged. As our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy, we will achieve inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. The paradigm shift rate is now doubling every decade, so the 21st century will see 20,000 years of progress at today's rate. Computation, communication, biological technologies, knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating at an even faster pace. Three-dimensional molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level "strong"artificial intelligence well before 2030. The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse engineering of the human brain, a process well under way. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, Kurzweil will present an inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny. One of the leading inventors of our time, Kurzweil has developed pioneering technologies in the areas of music synthesis, speech and character recognition, reading technology, virtual reality and cybernetic art. A graduate in computer science from MIT, Kurzweil is the recipient of the MIT-Lemelson Prize for invention, the National Medal of Technology, honors from three U.S. presidents, 18 honorary doctorates, and seven national and international film awards. He has written five books, of which four have been national best sellers. The Singularity is Near was a New York Times best seller and the #1 book on Amazon in both science and philosophy. Tickets: $9.75 regular admission; $7.75 for students, seniors and Museum of Science members; free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members. Tickets are available in advance at the box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline, or on-line at www.coolidge.org/science. For more details, visit the Coolidge web site or call 617/734-2500. _______________________________________________ Sci-tech-public mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/sci-tech-public
