Raymond C. Kurzweil

Photographer: Steve Marsel

Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Kurzweil Technologies Inc.

Most Important Technology of the Last 40 Years:

The computer.

Most Important Technology for the Coming Decade:

Information technology.

Technology That has Evolved in a Surprising Way:

Things have progressed the way I expected.

"I used to have two different interests: computer technology and health. After developing Type 2 diabetes in my 30s, I developed a treatment and wrote a book about it. But I didn't attempt to link the book to my other interest. In my new health book [Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever], the two are integrated, because health and medicine are becoming deeply integrated with information technology. The whole biotech revolution is understanding biology in information terms: how the genome expresses itself mathematically, the information pathways, and how to reprogram the software programs in our bodies.

"Twenty-five years down the line we'll be seeing extensions of the nervous system using nanobots: blood-cell-sized robots. One scientist has already cured Type 1 diabetes in rats with a nanodevice that intelligently lets out insulin. If you plot out trends for what will be feasible in terms of size and computation and communication, nanobots in the late 2020s will provide radical life extension: they will be reversing atherosclerosis, getting rid of damaged cells, reversing the aging process, and repairing DNA errors. These nanobots will also be able to go into the brain through capillaries—it's not invasive, there's no surgery—and interact with our neurons.

"If you want to go into virtual reality, these nanobots will shut down the sensory input from your real senses and replace them with the senses from that virtual environment. You'll be able to pick a re-creation of an Earth environment (like a tropical beach or a cathedral) or a fantastic one, alone or with someone. The experience will be just as high-resolution, just as compelling, as real reality."