Ray Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil, usually referred to as Ray Kurzweil is one of America's brilliant minds. Kurzweil has worked as an author, inventor, and futurist though out his life. However, while Kurzweil is commonly recognized as an advocate for futurists. His opinions and standings on the technological concepts he has have met with significant criticism from scientists and thinkers for his ideas. Growing up in New York City, Kurzweil showed a significant interest in computers and future ideas from an early age. In 1963 when he was only 15 years old Kurzweil wrote his first computer program. Later in 1965, he was invited to appear on the television show "I've got a Secret" that aired on CBS. On the show, Kurzweil preformed a song on piano that was composed by a computer he had built. The pattern recognition software that he created studied pieces by classical composers and then took what it learned from them and created its own song. More recently Kurzweil has been discussing how by the year 2020 we will have computers that will be powerful enough to be able to simulate the human brain. However, it wont be until the year 2029 that we will have actually completed the reverse engineering of the human brain. In addition, Kurzweil has also expressed interest in using computers to attempt a construction of a DNA clone of his late father.