i just came out of the second GDC 08 keynote by Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is an acclaimed inventor instrumental in creating scanner technology, text-to-speech and optical character recognition.

Last year, i made the mistake of suggesting i was going to skip a keynote speech. The guy i was talking to gripped me by the lapels and, wide-eyed and frantic, said “you DON’T MISS THE KEYNOTES.” i asked him why, and in reverent, hushed tones, as if we were sitting around a campfire, he recounted the legendary tale of a Microsoft keynote a few years back where they gave out free HD-teevees to a quarter of the audience.

There were no free teevees at Ray Kurzweil’s keynote, but one could argue that he gave away something much more valuable: the promise of immortality for those of us who could hang on long enough.

The premise of Kurzweil’s message was that information technology grows at a predictable, exponential rate. He blithely flipped through a series of graphs and charts demonstrating how all of the significant advances in human history, including the actual evolution of the species, fall along a predictable line that extends through an exponentially-stacked axis.

In his talk, Ray singlehandedly eased the audience’s minds about the energy crisis, famine, disease, mental illness, language barriers, obesity, forgetfulness and nearly every other ailment affecting mankind:

The Energy Crisis

According to Kurzweil, improvements in solar cells thanks to nanotechnology are increasing at an exponential rate. He says that the energy output from the sun is 1000 times greater than our energy demand. Installing enough of these solar panels will negate our need to burn coal and oil as fuel.

One thing he didn’t account for was the increase in energy demand as irresponsible initiatives like A Laptop for Every Child and building infrastructure in developing nations will increase our appetite for electricity. Is that appetite also exponential? Dunno. i’m no Kurzweil.

Disease

One of the speaker’s most interesting points is that thanks to DNA indexing, we now have the “source code” to our own biology. As genomes are mapped at an exponential rate, our understanding of how our bodies work also grows exponentially, as does our ability to create nanobots and genome inhibitors to zoom through our bloodstreams and cure disease. He talked about inhibiting the gene that causes Type 1 diabetes, thanks to the fact that we now have the “code” for how that gene behaves.

Mental Illness

Kurzweil also discussed mapping the human brain in a similar way. The more we’re able to replicate, with exponential growth, the way the brain behaves, the more likely we’ll be able to sort out mental health issues like schizophrenia - again, creating cures and solutions at an exponential rate. He talked about pea-sized processors that are implanted into Alzheimer sufferers’ brains that augment or replace the brain tissue forfeited to the illness. This is already happening? i was unaware. Or perhaps i heard that somewhere and forgot about it due to Alzheimers.

Language Barriers

Midway through the presentation, the speaker talked about how, using a combination of text-to-speech and translation technology, he had a conversation with a native German speaker. They both spoke in their own language, and the technology translated on the fly. He went on to back this up with an actual demo. Douglas Adams’ babel fish came immediately to mind. More on Babel later.

Obesity

Ray’s cure for obesity involves nanobots that strip the body’s propensity to hang on to calories, which will enable us to eat as much as we want without getting fat. And by “us”, he means wealthy members of the Big Seven richest countries in the world, for whom i believe obesity is a just penalty. The idea of negating this consequence for the minority who are hoarding food from a starving world turns my stomach, so to speak.

Forgetfulness

One interesting prediction Kurzweil made that’s been echoed elsewhere at the conference is that the virtual reality spaces that exist only on computers today - World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, Second Life, etc - will some day (soon) go with us throughout the “real” world. He said that you could have some sort of processor in your brain, interacting with some jazz in your eyeball, so that when you see someone at a conference or a party, you’ll see his name floating above his head.

i wondered if we’d see a yellow exclamation mark above the heads of real-life people who were offering us jobs?

And Then There’s God

As a Christian, i found some of Kurzweil’s talk to be at odds with my beliefs. i guess i see myself as a bit of a catastrophist. The Bible tells the story of Job, a man who had everything - a wife, kids, a kingdom, an iPhone - until one day God decided to test his mettle and instantly wiped out everything he had. A little earlier, He flooded the entire Earth when human beings got on His nerves.

We also have the story of the tower of Babel, after which Adams’ fish is named. In that story, mankind was getting a little uppity with its tech and decided to build a very large skyscraper so they could push the button for the top floor and go poke God in the eye.

God looked and this and said “if they’re already up to this, so early in their history, what else could they accomplish?” Being omniscient, God of course knew. He was just thinking out loud. Nevertheless, He waved his hand and suddenly everyone on the construction project started talking funny talk. Such is the Bible’s explanation of different languages.

Kurzweil’s talk, while fascinating, brings to mind a present day tower of Babel. There are enough volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and meteors out there to keep me from getting too smug about the inevitability of our so-called evolution.