Futurist: We'll Accept Computers as Human

Computers could get all our transistors going in the very near future when we finally accept them as "human," predicts a well-known futurist. Inventor and author Ray Kurzweil believes that humans and technology are blurring—he points to the bionic smartphones attached to nearly every human's hand—and will eventually merge. "We are a human-machine civilization. Everybody has been enhanced with computer technology," he told an audience yesterday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. "They're really part of who we are." Machines will also continue to evolve on their own toward a human-like status, notes CNN. "If we can convince people that computers have complexity of thought and nuance we'll come to accept them as human," says Kurzweil.

Kurzweil is perhaps best know for his bestselling The Singularity is Near in which he predicts that one day we will routinely augment our bodies and intelligence with machines. Within mere decades, he predicts that microscopic computers 1,000 times more powerful than human blood cells could be injected in bloodstreams to give humans superhuman endurance. As for "human computers," Kurzweil has predicted that machines will have an intelligence—and emotions—to match man's by 2029. (More nanotechnology stories.)