UPDATED 10:31 EDT / MARCH 15 2011

The Future Is Now: Ray Kurzweil Predictions Come to Life

This infographic lays out what futurist Ray Kurzweil had to say about computing as early as 20 years ago – and evidently, some of those things did come to life. Kurzweil believes the growth of computing power is not linear but exponential, which seems to correlate with the achievement of 107 calculations per second back in 2000, and 1010 calculations a few years later – that’s about 1 rate brain worth. Moreover, Kurzweil thinks that the rate of computation will reach the capacity of all human brains by 2020-2040, or about 1025 calculations/sec.

According to the infographic Kurzweil also got several things right when it comes to mobility. An impressive 60 percent of all computers sold in 2009 were laptops, and that number is expected to increase to 70 percent by 2012. Furthermore, laptops also got a whole lot portable and lightweight then a few years ago, and broadband internet became available to almost everyone – just like Kurzweil said. This trend has been evolving along with the mobile revolution, and both Akamai and JiWire reported significant growth in mobile surfing and WiFi usage throughout the last years.

Kurzweil also got the high-quality screens, video and e-learning trends right. He also looked a bit deeper into the future, and expects virtual reality glasses, 3-D hologram mobile communications and ultra targeted supersonic ads to arrive in the near future – but we’ll have to wait this one out, too.


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