Raymond Kurzweil

Kurzweil can speak on a range of topics relating to blindness, disabilities, and assistive technologies in the 21st century. With his many technology firsts, among them: the first pocket-sized print-to-speech reading machine for the blind (2006), the first Continuous Speech Natural Language Command and Control Software (1997), the first Speech Recognition Dictation System for Windows (1994), the first commercially marketed Large-Vocabulary Speech Recognition, the first Omni-Font (any type font) Optical Character Recognition (1976), and the first Print-to-Speech Reading Machine for the Blind (1976), Kurzweil speaks from experience about the future of disabilities in an age of accelerating technology.

Kurzweil has a presentation that describes a program for innovation, how to foster it in an organization, and how to bring inventions to market. In this talk, he draws upon his own history of innovation as an inventor which led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, founded by the U.S. Patent Office in 2002.

ince the release of his book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Kurzweil has addressed many medical and health related audiences on the merger of science, technology, and health and its impact on the healthcare industry and human longevity, as well as the central role of biological and medical information and knowledge as medicine transforms from a hit or miss process to an information technology.

Kurzweil has a presentation that describes a program for innovation, how to foster it in an organization, and how to bring inventions to market. In this talk, he draws upon his own history of innovation as an inventor which led to his induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, founded by the U.S. Patent Office in 2002.

Kurzweil presents to many academic groups including educators, administrators, board members, and IT specialists about the intersection of information technology (a broad perspective) and education and human knowledge. Kurzweil describes a future in which there is widespread and inexpensive access to education around the world, individualized learning through computer assisted instruction, full-immersion virtual reality classrooms and labs, and ultimately the ability to download knowledge and skills directly to our brains.