Microsoft founder Bill Gates has called Ray Kurzweil “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” In a book published in 1998, Kurzweil prognosticated the future we would see in 2009. Here are some of his hits and misses.

HITS

2009 prediction: Digital objects such as books, music albums, movies and software will be rapidly distributed wirelessly as data files.

What happened: Movies, TV shows, music, books and applications are increasingly delivered over Wi-Fi and cell phone networks.

2009 prediction:  Telephonic communication will routinely include moving images, allowing meetings among geographically disparate participants.

What happened:  Though we still use voice-only telephones, Internet messaging with video has become more and more common.

2009 prediction:  Personal computers with high resolution displays will come in a range of sizes, including some small enough to be embedded in clothing and jewelry.

What happened:  Today devices are hung from belt loops, worn on blouses as jewelry pins and embedded into hearing aids.

2009 prediction:  Although traditional classrooms will still be common, Web-based courseware will become a popular means of learning.

What happened:  There is now a growing movement of Web-based universities, and major traditional universities are putting all of their courses online.

MISSES

2009 prediction:  The majority of text will be created by speech recognition dictation software.

What happened:  Though speech recognition is now extremely accurate and is used by millions of people, most text is still created using keyboards.

2009 prediction:  Translating telephone technology – allowing people who speak different languages to talk to one another in real-time – will be in common use.

What happened: Though there is now a downloadable iPhone application that provides this capability, it is not yet in common use.

Some of Kurzweil’s all-time best predictions

In the mid- 1990s, a worldwide communication network will emerge. It will connect hundreds of millions of people to each other and to vast knowledge resources (prediction made in mid-1980s, when the Internet as we know it was a fantasy).

Reality: The Internet as we know it was born, just around this time.

By 1998, a computer will take the world chess championship (prediction made in mid-1980s, when an average player could beat the best computer).

Reality: In 1997, the computer Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov.

The Soviet Union would be swept away by decentralized communication technologies such as e-mail over teletype machines and fax machines (prediction made in the mid-1980s, when the Soviet Union was going strong).

Reality: The Soviet Union collapsed for a number of reasons, with the rise of modern communication technologies playing a crucial role.

[NOTE: Is this surprising? Remember Fahrenheit 451? I just saw the 1966 movie, featuring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. As one (real life) bookstore clerk said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.

A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes
so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’ ]

Pensioners burn books for warmth

From Metro.co.uk

Miles Erwin – 5th January, 2010

Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm.

Pensioners are burning books to keep warm

Volunteers have reported that ‘a large number’ of elderly customers are snapping up hardbacks as cheap fuel for their fires and stoves.

Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13ºC in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6ºC in London, -5ºC in Birmingham and -7ºC in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite.

Workers at one charity shop in Swansea, in south Wales, described how the most vulnerable shoppers were seeking out thick books such as encyclopaedias for a few pence because they were cheaper than coal.

One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.

A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’

A 500g book can sell for as little as 5p, while a 20kg bag of coal costs £5.

Since January 2008, gas bills have risen 40 per cent and electricity prices 20 per cent, although people over 60 are entitled to a winter fuel allowance of between £125 and £400.

Jonathan Stearn, energy expert for Consumer Focus, said: ‘If pensioners are taking such desperate measures to heat their homes it is shocking. With low wholesale prices and increasing profit margins, there is clearly room for energy companies to make price cuts immediately.’

Ruth Davison, of the National Housing Federation, said: ‘The spiralling cost of energy means heating homes has become a luxury rather than a necessity for many people – particularly the elderly, low paid and unemployed.’