No matter what problem you encounter, whether it's a grand challenge for humanity or a personal problem of your own, there's an idea out there that can overcome it. And you can find that idea.
Ray KurzweilRead
I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Inventions should be designed with future trends in mind, not just current conditions.
Ray Kurzweil emphasizes the importance of long-term thinking in the process of invention. He suggests that for an invention to be successful and viable, it must align with the future context and trends of the world once it is completed, rather than the circumstances present at the time of its conception.
Themes
InventionFutureTrendsLong-TermInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a technology conference when discussing the future of AI and its implications on society.
More from Ray Kurzweil
All quotes →When I was a student at MIT, we all shared one computer and it took up a whole building. The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful. What now fits in your pocket 25 years from now will fit into a blood cell and will again be millions of times more cost effective.
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When you talk to a human in 2035, you'll be talking to someone that's a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence.
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Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.
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I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
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