"That's a pretty far-out prediction for when he made it."
Did he make his prediction in the 1960s? The original Star Trek series posited the existence of computerized universal translators.
Edit: Text-to-speech and vice-versa technology has been commercially available for decades, reasonably good versions for at least 2 decades. Automated translation systems have been available for decades, with free, online services available for at least the last decade. Talking electronic multi-language dictionaries have been available for years. It doesn't take much creativity to imagine plumbing together existing technologies (speech-to-text in one language, textual automatic translation to another language, and text-to-speech in the second language). Streamlining the process, making it work well, and making it available easily on widely available cell phones is great and amazingly useful but hardly an unpredictable innovation.
Sorry, imagining that it would some day be possible to pipe the output of previously existing application A into previously existing application B (or imagining that previously existing devices will gain slightly incrementally improved input capabilities) is hardly a "far-out" prediction.
There's a difference between predicting which decade a technology will be in use by the consumer, and whether it is possible. Almost all technologies are possible (teleportation included). The question is when they will land in yours/my hands.
I'm more impressed with Kurzweill saying:
"Early 2000s
* Translating telephones allow people to speak to
each other in different languages."
And being off, admittedly, by six or seven years, then someone positing:
"Teleportation is possible" and it becoming practical in 2170.
That right there is exactly the sort of reasoning I object to.
A poorly defined prediction is made: "Teleportation will be possible".
Now, everyone who reads this probably imagines 'beam me up, scotty'.
Subsequently, teleportation is defined to include things like 'quantum teleportation', which, while it does have 'teleportation' in the name, does not instantly move mass, from one place to another, and, fundamentally, is not theorised to enable the Star Trek-esque people 'beaming' around the place.
I'm not saying which definition of the word 'teleportation' is best - just that the initial statement, if we allow it to be subsequently satisfied by either of those things, in a way it wasn't intended, is not very interesting.
Did he make his prediction in the 1960s? The original Star Trek series posited the existence of computerized universal translators.
Edit: Text-to-speech and vice-versa technology has been commercially available for decades, reasonably good versions for at least 2 decades. Automated translation systems have been available for decades, with free, online services available for at least the last decade. Talking electronic multi-language dictionaries have been available for years. It doesn't take much creativity to imagine plumbing together existing technologies (speech-to-text in one language, textual automatic translation to another language, and text-to-speech in the second language). Streamlining the process, making it work well, and making it available easily on widely available cell phones is great and amazingly useful but hardly an unpredictable innovation.
Sorry, imagining that it would some day be possible to pipe the output of previously existing application A into previously existing application B (or imagining that previously existing devices will gain slightly incrementally improved input capabilities) is hardly a "far-out" prediction.