[ExI] Ray Kurzweil speaks at the Second Life Community Convention

[Giulio Prisco (2nd email)]

http://cosmi2le.com/index.php?/site/ray_kurzweil_speaks_at_the_second_life_community_convention/

In the picture, the only image that I have found of Ray’s avatar
Kurzweil Tomorrow (via Flickr). I really want to watch the talk, I
hope someone made a recording and will post it somewhere. This is the
text coverage of Ray Kurzweil talk at the Second Life Community
Convention that I have found so far.

New World Notes

When Schlink Lardner and I arrived late to Ray Kurzweil’s opening
keynote of SLCC, we were greeted by his disembodied voice emanating
from a hot brunette named Kurzweil Tomorrow. No, Ray hasn’t uploaded
his consciousness into the metaverse (yet), he’s just streaming his
talk to this San Francisco ballroom from a convention in Boston.
SLCC’s Rhiannon Chatnoir handles the feed from the back. In twenty
years, he predicts, we won’t be able to distinguish SL bots from
humans.

Avatar Planet Blog

Day two of the Second Life Community Conference went smoothly.
Attendees arrived, were issued their badges and SLCC teeshirts, and
proceeded to Grand Ballroom for the morning’s keynote speaker, the
legendary technology visionary Ray Kurzweil.

However, Kurzweil wasn’t there. At least not in person. He was in
Second Life, and delivering his talk via streaming media to the
audience assembled in the St. Francis Hotel, who watched his avatar
speaking on two large projections screens. He spoke of the exponential
growth of technology leading to changes in society that are much
faster than the linear growth frequently forecast by economic modelers
and spoke about the six paradigms of the grown of technology The First
Paradigm began with the 1890 census, the first to be conducted with
the then startling new tecnology of punch cards. Kurzweil projects
that the current Fifth Paradigm, based on Moore’s Law projecting the
growth in power of computers, will end around 2020 and will be
supplanted by the Sixth Paradigm, molecular computing.

Kurzweil addressed far more than can be covered here. For more
information, go to his website http://www.KurzWeilaAI.net.

MixedRealities

In his keynote speech Ray Kurzweil definitely pointed to revolution.
The human evolution is accelerating rapidly. Totally disruptive
paradigm shifts are taking place.

Kurzweil presented from Second Life, taking the shape of a woman
avatar with red lips and long black hair. This was a statement of
course: Kurzweil appreciates the possibilities of virtually becoming
another body.

One of his basic assumptions is that information technology is
expanding into all fields, and together with exponential progress in
nano-technology this leads to all kinds of fascinating (r)evolutions.

Kurzweil for instance is convinced that people will be able to “feel”
the virtual environment using nano-devices in their body - giving the
notion “immersiveness” a new dimension.

See also the very interesting post of Dusan Writer SECOND LIFE: WHAT’S
NEXT - REPORT FROM SLCC 09, on two different but (I think)
complementary roadmaps for Second Life. Interesting (second) times
ahead. I am sure we will see many new and exciting things in Second
Life soon. Probably Second Life was not dead, just quiet and mot
making much noise for a while, and we will here much more noise about
it soon.

-- 
Giulio Prisco
http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco
aka Eschatoon Magic
http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon