Four of the world's best futurists
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is an author. His 1994 publication, Out of Control, discusses a future where machines and systems are so complex as to be indistinguishable(难区分的) from living things.
His latest book What Technology Wants suggests that technology is not just a mixture of wires and metals but a living thing that has its own need. The book looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover what it wants.
Dr Michio Kaku
Dr Michio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the city of New York and the author of The Future of the Mind and Physics of the Future.
In The Future of the Mind, he explores the frontier of neuroscience. He predicts that one day we will be able to upload the human brain into a computer. In Physics of the Future, he predicts that glasses and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet and cars will become driverless with the power of the GPS system.
David Brin
Science fiction author and scientist, David Brin has received awards. In 1998, he won the Freedom of Speech Award for The Transparence Society. The book concerns threats to personal affairs and openness in the information age. In a world where the police monitor public places 24 hours a day with cameras and some credit companies can sell people's financial details to anyone willing to pay, Brin warns that surveillance(监视) technology will be used by too few people in the future. He argues that the tables should be turned and the public should have access to information like who is buying financial details from credit companies.
Dr Ray Kurzweil
Dr Ray Kurzweil is the main inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. He is the director of artificial intelligence development at Google.
Over the past 25 years, a number of his predictions have come true. In 1990, he predicted a computer would defeat a human at chess by 1998. He predicts that by the 2020s, most diseases will go away and self-driving cars begin to take over the roads.
