AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Sean Lamberger One part biography, one part brain food; as an appetizer to the thought path of noted futurist Ray Kurzweil, it can be difficult at times to separate fact from fragment over the course of this documentary. Kurzweil's favorite subject is one of increasing relevance, perhaps even by the minute: he seeks to pinpoint the moment of so-called "singularity," when mankind's built-in body chemistry will finally cross the line into his rapidly-developing technological and biological know-how. In short - how soon will we be able to back up our thoughts and feelings to an external hard drive, what sort of moral and philosophical arguments will be made for and against the practice, and where will the ball of wax roll after that debate is behind us? Though its post-production effects can get a bit over-the-top at times, reminding viewers more than once of the over-ambitious "world of tomorrow" predictions popular in the 1950s, the film is largely successful at fostering a curious sort of fascination with the current point in history and the staggering number of possibilities present within our lifetime. Kurzweil himself is to thank for much of that, as his smooth, relaxed speaking gives the impression that anything is possible, even if (as some of his detractors point out during the film's apex) he completely overlooks humanity's tendency to use such moments for evil causes as well as good. Intensely interesting stuff that effectively sows the seeds of conception.

robotbling (www.plasticpals.com) Regardless of what you think of Ray Kurzweil, his predictions, or the singularity, they certainly make interesting subjects for a documentary. If you're new to the singularity, Transcendent Man gives a primer on what exponential growth in information technology may bring for genetics, nano technology, and robotics – all within the coming decades. His predictions extrapolate on existing technologies and are vague enough that there's enough wiggle room to be convincing, at least superficially. Fascinating though these ideas may be, I felt the intimate portrait of Kurzweil himself is the real heart of the film. When you see how many supplements he takes on a daily basis, to say he's an eccentric would be putting things lightly.Kurzweil believes, for example, that he will one day bring his father back from the dead. Not a biblical resurrection, mind you, but one based on data. He believes that he will be able to feed information about his father's life (boxes and boxes collecting his father's personal letters, music compositions, and other documents), including his own memories of him, into a computer simulation that will magically recreate his persona. Most of the time, I felt like I had a good grasp on the concepts discussed in the film, but I take issue with this. Assuming that such a simulation were possible, it could never be accurate because it would be based entirely on Kurzweil's perception of his father and scraps of information that can't possibly reflect the depth of one's soul (for lack of a better term). Others' perceptions are usually quite different from how we see ourselves, and people usually have a hard time understanding themselves in the first place! I can play along and say that maybe, someday, we'll be able to "back up" our brains onto computers, but without those brains, a simulation could never be perfect. I'm sure such a simulation would have beneficial psychological effects for the bereaved, but that's beside the point. It seems to me that if Kurzweil is willing to delude himself into believing a simulation of his father is as good as the real thing (or at least good enough to claim it will cure his father's death), then he is probably deluding himself about a lot of other things, too. The film does give us some perspective through dissenting opinions, but everyone interviewed (with the exception of a religious radio talk show host) agrees to some extent with what Kurzweil has predicted.It's fun to think that an artificial intelligence may bootstrap itself, and our own limited brains, into higher and higher levels of consciousness. Yet I can't help but be reminded of that old adage, "anything that seems too good to be true probably is". Scientists with expertise outside of Kurzweil's domain (such as biology) argue that he oversimplifies things. Others say he is simply overly optimistic. I don't think either accusation is unjust. The film paints Kurzweil as traumatized by the loss of his father, and terrified of his own mortality. It isn't surprising that some accuse him of pseudo-scientific religious quackery of the sort Kurzweil dismisses as comfort for the dying.

sunking Ray Kurzweil has known he wanted to be an inventor from the age of 5, and has now been at it for all those years. Along the way he realized that the timing of inventions was critical to their success, otherwise most inventions fail. Think e-readers 10 years ago, tablet PC's 7 years ago, and the Apple Newton – all bombs then, but now the timing is right. So he started analyzing technology trends and discovered the "law of accelerating returns"; in summary that technology grows in a predictable and exponential patterns and that amazing things our in our future. Ray has had amazing success with his publicly made predictions. For instance, in the book "The Age of Spirtual Machines", he made 147 predictions for the year 2009, of which 86% are correct or essentially correct. (Reference: "How My Predictions are Faring, Ray Kurzweil, Oct. 2010; http://c0068172.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/predictions.pdf ) In other words when Ray Kurzweil speaks, people listen and you should too. I will admit, when I first heard is ideas of how man will evolve with technology, I was quite skeptical. But as I dug deeper into why he was saying this would happen, I began to see the trends are in his favor. Think about it; have you noticed that technology has been moving at a quickening pace lately? The film follows Ray over several years, catching him on his lecture circuit, at his company, his home, and traveling about. Throughout the film Ray explains the "law of accelerating returns" and where it will lead to. Also Ray's critics and supporters give their opinions throughout. Ray himself seems to be an incredibly calm individual who rarely strays from his relaxed tone of speaking. Ray's trends predict that technology trends are crossing over into health-care and that if you can live for another 15 years you have the chance of living a very long time. Ray's predictions give us hope in a time when so much around us seems gloomy. The documentary is a fascinating look at Ray and his ideas, and I highly recommend it.

optionsf I recently came across the concept of the Singularity in a book "Why the West Rules...for now", which used its arguments. This documentary talks about Ray Kurzweil's predictions of the impact of the exponential growth of technology and its implications on the evolution of humankind: essentially that they will merge, with huge implications.Now I want to read his book The Singularity and explore the concept more thoroughly...I suppose this is a great outcome for such a documentary, but it's not for someone avoiding deep thought.Ray is a great thinker, and an optimist and believes that death is essentially avoidable by essentially transforming ourselves to a different "machine" body, based on the unavoidable trend of increasing computer power, which will soon be able to reach the capability of one human brain. Once computing power surpasses the brain, then computers will design computers, and they will grow exponentially smarter.But as is pointed out in the film, if we think we can control that process once it is smarter than us, we're being unrealistic. As these machines interconnect, the power of one brain becomes pretty insignificant.One incredible scene follows the promise of machines that can read printed text and read it aloud to the blind. Starting with a $20,000 machine decades ago that Stevie Wonder used, to something today that fits in a shirt pocket, which is the equivalent of a $100 million computer a few decades ago.Another interesting points is his prediction that the cost of a watt hour of energy from solar sources will fall below that of fossil fuels in 5 years. Once this happens and solar power can be obtained from flexible panels installable anywhere, the geopolitics, economics and pollution from extracting, buying and using fossil fuels begins to go away.I'm 49 and this makes me think as I type this on my <$500 laptop computer, after watching the movie on a $500 Ipad which I downloaded from the Internet, then I'm writing a review on a database of films where you can call up information on almost any film ever made; that none of this was doable just 15 years ago.I can go to a city I've never been in, load up maps on my Iphone, find my way around, use a translator I can speak into in English which will speak in another language, and access money in another country to pay my bills.The darker side as was also announced today as I write this is someone figured out that your Iphone stores your whereabouts for a year or so, and so we lose our privacy. Romances are made on the Internet and lost when a spouse sees a text message setting up an affair. My father recently died of small cell lung cancer. Within a week or so reading everything I could on it, i knew as much as many of the doctors I was dealing with (one asked if I was a doctor), and could help guide his therapy.My life, in terms of photos, comments, interaction with friends, things and places I like is already being compiled in Facebook, and that will live on long after I die...Our stupid political arguments now that you see on Cable TV are a disgusting waste of time: Was Obama born in the US? Should we cut the deficit by raising taxes on wealthy people, cutting medical care and financial support to older and poor people? Should gays be allowed to marry (20 years ago this was only an idea, now it's viable in a fast growing number of cities, states and countries).We don't talk about the big issues: what does it mean that China now uses more energy than the US does. That it's economy is #2 and will soon outpace us? That the US is really not #1 anymore in anything significant (life expectancy, literacy, income, science achievements, etc) but one among many. What does it mean that we are clearly destroying our planet and using its resources (food, fish, air, minerals) at unsustainable rates....where does that leave us? These are the kinds of questions this film made me think about, and it answers in an optimistic way: in 15 years the advances in life expectancy as we "reprogram the bad software that makes up the human body" will be growing at more than 1 year per calendar year, essentially meaning if we make it 15 years we may live forever.But more importantly, who has control of this technology or does it control us? There is no real way to program morality into a computer, it's too complicated and no one agrees on one correct moral path. Does that fact that eventually we can "upload" our brains into a net where there are billions of others, and all interconnect mean we'l never want to unplug for fear of being lonely or nonfunctional? (like the Borg in Star Trek)...? Can you live without your Facebook, cellphone, texts, email or Internet for even one day without feeling out of touch? Watch this film. We all need to be thinking about these issues, not the bullshit on cable TV news.