Those looking to hear about the future of technology straight from the horse’s mouth should head to Sonoma next weekend. Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading voices in the discussion about accelerating technology will finally debut his movie The Singularity Is Near, based on his book of the same title. The Sonoma Film Festival will premier the documentary on Friday April 16th, along with a special panel afterwards which will feature Kurzweil himself. Day passes are still on sale for around $60. The Singularity Is Near movie promises to explore the possibilities of the next few decades, including Kurzweil’s famous predictions that man and machine will become increasingly interconnected and that artificial intelligence will arise sooner than we think.
This isn’t the only Singularity-based movie on the horizon, and it’s not even the only one that focuses on Kurzweil. I was able to attend Ptolemy’s documentary on Kurweil and the Singularity (titled Transcendent Man) at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. The Singularity Is Near movie, however, features the first time that Kurzweil has co-directed a film about himself and his ideas. Attendees should be able to get as clear of a view of his ideas as possible. If they have any questions there’s always the panel discussion to clear things up.
Interestingly, The Singularity Is Near will feature a “B-plot” narrative alongside the documentary. This story, about an emergent AI named Ramona, blends fact and fiction, hopefully to provide a better illustration of Kurzweil’s vision of the future. We still don’t have a trailer, but you can check out this synopsis on the IMDB database to get a better feel for the film.
Anyone attending should definitely let us know what they think. (I may try to get up there for the premier myself.) If successful, The Singularity Is Near movie may do what the book and Kurzweil himself have been trying to do for a while now: bring the realistic possibilities of the future (risks and benefits) into the public consciousness so that we can plan for tomorrow, today.
[image credit: The Singularity Is Near Movie]
[source: The Singularity is Near Movie, IMDB, Sonoma Film Festival]
