Dean Kamen: At any point when you make something to help enhance some human capability beyond what was quote “normal” people start to worry you made it, let’s say, transcendent, but if you couldn’t hear well you could use a hearing aid. Right now we can make listening devices which can do really good filtering, that could probable allow me to have something in my ear that could hear a communication happening in a totally focused manner maybe at the other end of this room or outside the building.
We made our prosthetic arm and we were very proud when these kids at Walter Reed and other places put them on, but I don’t know anybody at that would rather have our device than the original equipment.
I don’t think it’ll take the twenty years before we’ll make an arm that is way more capable than any human arm in terms of power, speed, precision, performance, but like glasses, and like other things, instead of being afraid of them everybody is going to decide this is called progress, we’d like to avail ourselves of that. I’m not afraid of new technologies coming along. I think the exponential growth system is, as we’ve all heard, going to make it come along at a breathtaking rate.
Transcendent Man LIVE: A Conversation About the Future Live with Ray Kurzweil.
NCM Fathom, Ptolemaic Productions and Therapy Studios Present One-Night Event on August 3 in Nearly 500 Select Theaters. Broadcasted LIVE from the Lincoln Center in NYC.
This first-of-its-kind event will be a powerful discussion about the possibility of immortality. It becoming reality by 2045 as well as other implications of accelerating technologies. The evening will begin with a brief presentation by inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil, followed by a provocative panel discussion, which will incorporate clips from the critically acclaimed documentary TRANSCENDENT MAN.
Panelists include Kurzweil; Barry Ptolemy, filmmaker; Deepak Chopra (Live via Teleportec); Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc.; Michio Kaku, physicist; Tan Le, technology entrepreneur; and Dean Kamen, inventor. With pre-recorded remarks from former Vice President Al Gore, Quincy Jones, Bill Maher, Elon Musk and others.