Prof. Crossman on Ray Kurzweil's Reading Machine

I attended Toronto's World Future Conference in July and presented my ideas on "The Coming Age of Talking Computers". Ray Kurzweil demonstrated his new electronic reading machine, the K-NFB (Kurzweil National Federation of the Blind reader). The K-NFB is a small instrument that you hold and move across printed pages of text, and it speaks the text aloud accurately and clearly. 

 

You can check out the reader at www.knfbreader.com. In my view, Kurzweil's device, while made specifically for people who have sight disabilities, can and will be used by anybody, literate or nonliterate, with or without a disability, to access information that's stored as text. I'm sure that, very soon, similar devices, using translator software, will be able to instantaneously translate the text of one language into the speech of another language. As you know, I've forecast that written language / text will soon be obsolete, that all reading and writing will be replaced by speaking, listening, and looking at graphics / video, and that by 2050 the electronically-developed countries will be oral cultures. Kurzweil's device is just one of a series of current tech breakthoughs that is helping to create the VIVO Age--the era of voice-in / voice-out talking computers.

 

William Crossman

www.compspeak2050.org

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