Coastside Film Society to screen documentary about the imminent merger of human and machine intelligence

Feature: Transcendent Man

Barry Ptolemy's compelling feature-length documentary about the life & ideas of controversial inventor & futurist Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil predicts that mankind is quickly approaching a moment of "Singularity" - the time when human and machine intelligence will merge.

Kurzweil theories can't be easily dismissed out of hand. He has just too long a track record as a prescient tech pioneer.  He has been a leader in the fields of optical character recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, voice recognition, and music synthesis.

Kurzweil is not only predicting that we will see a merging of mind and machine by the year 2030, he says this merger will provide us with the smarts to start tackling mankind's most profound limitations. In Kurzweil's new world, disease, aging, hunger, poverty, and even death will soon be conquered.  

The movie delves deeply into the feasibility and philosophical implications of Kurzweil predictions through interviews with world luminaries such as Colin Powell, Kevin Kelly, Robert Metcalfe, Hugo de Garis, Dean Kamen, and Stevie Wonder.  

Are you ready to live forever?