Kurzweil Part 2

Ray Kurzweil's Slippery Futurism was the title of the cover article in IEEE Spectrum's December issue. I wrote about Ray Kurzweil's prognostication gaps back at the beginning of 2010, so this article for me brings some level of vindication. The former editor of Scientific American John Rennie complains that (and I quote):

• On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity.
• Most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable.
• His unambiguously correct statements are wedded to others that sound close to reality…but are also somewhat off. They're like descriptions of the world as seen through a fish-eye lens.

By his own account the would-be tech prophet reckons that in 1999 he made 108 predictions for 2009, some 102 were either entirely correct (89) or essentially correct (13); only one was just wrong. Indeed Kurzweil followed up Rennie's article with a 148 page exposition in support of these conclusions. It was entitled "Why I am so marvelous"... no just kidding.

Here are examples of rather humdrum predictions:

Cables are disappearing. Communication between components uses short-distance wireless technology. High-speed wireless communication provides access to the Web.

A $1,000 personal computer can perform about a trillion calculations per second.

These were things that everyone was predicting. Yes we all know that things are getting smaller, faster, cheaper and more unplugged. These were trends that were evident even to casual observers in 1999.

As an aside I would point out that the average person today owns and uses more gadget wires than they did a decade ago, thanks in large part to the proliferation of every possible kind of power adapter plug, voltage and form factor combined with the fact that we are using more gadgets than before. Have you ever kicked yourself for forgetting to pack a particular wire on a vacation or business trip?

Nonetheless, I am not going to quibble. That wireless technology has taken off is undeniable. Many of us have wireless networks in our homes and carry smart phones that allow us to remain 'plugged in' (although dead spots do abound). Demand is growing for cellular bandwidth which has prompted 4G and spectrum soul-searching at the FCC.

Sometimes Kurzweil is just plain wrong and it is frustrating that he refuses to admit it much less try to engage in some constructive analysis about why things turned out differently and what the implications of that are. He was wrong that (his analysis in parenthesis):

• The majority of text is created using speech recognition (partially correct)
  
• Language user interfaces are ubiquitous (partially correct)
  
• Business transactions often take place with an animated virtual personality (partially correct)
  
• Translating telephones are commonly used (essentially correct)
  
• Technology advances have lead to continuous economic growth (no comment)
  
• Human musicians routinely jam with cybernetic musicians (correct)
  
• The neo-Luddite movement is growing (correct)
  

One thing he has done is to inflate the number of predictions he made so as to make it near impossible to go through all of them. But I posted the definitive list of 12 predictions on this blog, which he had set apart in his book. Of these, most of them were wrong.

Kurzweil admits that the majority of all text is not created using voice recognition. But he still rates this prediction as "partially correct" since two iPhone apps were released at the end of 2009. Of these the Google Mobile app is not really relevant. Although the Dragon Mobile app has achieved popularity in the app-world, I would eat a hat of your choosing if it accounts for the majority of all text created.

He gives his translating telephone prediction a higher "essentially correct" rating. "I suppose one could argue how common its use is today". The Jibbigo iPhone app is his main argument here. Apple advertises that there are over 300,000 iPhone apps. The existence of an app does not mean it is common or routine.