Ray Kurzweil and Futurism

Ray Kurzweil has a long list of titles that goes along with his name. But the one that he is most known for is being a futurist. But what is a futurist? Futurologists are scientists that attempt to systematically predict the future. So what is it that a futurist does? I imagine this guy sitting in a dark room pondering with a pipe and pulling random ideas out of a hat. Well I guess a futurist does a lot more than that.

Futurists consult with different companies and public organizations about upcoming global trends, plausible scenarios, emerging marketing opportunities, and risk management. Futurists are basically practicing probability. 

Ray Kurzweil is most known as his position as a futurist, but he also has done a lot of studies in transhumanism. This new trend in futurism looks into the ways that humans will extend their intelligence through the use of technology. 

Kurzweil has written many books on the future of humanity and some of his predictions have come true. In the 1980's he published a book called "The Age of Intelligent Machines" in which he predicted that by the end of the 1990's most of our documents would exist solely on computers and the internet. 

While Kurzweil has received criticism for some of his ideas, I believe that humans really are curious about the future of humanity and love looking to smart people such as Kurzweil for answers.