This is the second entry in my series of blog posts that will analyze the accuracy of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions about what things would be like in 2019. These predictions come from his 1998 book The Age of Spiritual Machines. My first entry on this subject can be found here.
“Hand-held displays are extremely thin, very high resolution, and weigh only ounces.”
RIGHT
The tablet computers and smartphones of 2019 meet these criteria. For example, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S5 is only 0.22″ thick, has a resolution that is high enough for the human eye to be unable to discern individual pixels at normal viewing distances (3840 x 2160 pixels), and weighs 14 ounces (since 1 pound is 16 ounces, the Tab S5’s weight falls below the higher unit of measurement, and it should be expressed in ounces). Tablets like this are of course meant to be held in the hands during use.
The smartphones of 2019 also meet Kurzweil’s criteria.
“People read documents either on the hand-held displays or, more commonly, from text that is projected into the ever present virtual environment using the ubiquitous direct-eye displays. Paper books and documents are rarely used or accessed.
MOSTLY WRONG
A careful reading of this prediction makes it clear that Kurzweil believed AR glasses would be commonest way people would read text documents by late 2019. The second most common method would be to read the documents off of smartphones and tablet computers. A distant last place would be to read old-fashioned books with paper pages. (Presumably, reading text off of a laptop or desktop PC monitor was somewhere between the last two.)
The first part of the prediction is badly wrong. At the end of 2019, there were fewer than 1 million sets of AR glasses in use around the world. Even if all of their owners were bibliophiles who spent all their waking hours using their glasses to read documents that were projected in front of them, it would be mathematically impossible for that to constitute the #1 means by which the human race, in aggregate, read written words.
Certainly, is now much more common for people to read documents on handheld displays like smartphones and tablets than at any time in the past, and paper’s dominance of the written medium is declining. Additionally, there are surely millions of Americans who, like me, do the vast majority of their reading (whether for leisure or work) off of electronic devices and computer screens. However, old-fashioned print books, newspapers, magazines, and packets of workplace documents are far from extinct, and it is inaccurate to claim they “are rarely used or accessed,” both in the relative and absolute senses of the statement. As the bar chart above shows, sales of print books were actually slightly higher in 2019 than they were in 2004, which was near the time when The Age of Spiritual Machines was published.
Finally, sales of “graphic paper”–which is an industry term for paper used in newsprint, magazines, office printer paper, and other common applications–were still high in 2019, even if they were trending down. If 110 million metric tons of graphic paper were sold in 2019, then it can’t be said that “Paper books and documents are rarely used or accessed.” Anecdotally, I will say that, though my office primarily uses all-digital documents, it is still common to use paper documents, and in fact it is sometimes preferable to do so.
“Most twentieth-century paper documents of interest have been scanned and are available through the wireless network.”
RIGHT
The wording again makes it impossible to gauge the prediction’s accuracy. What counts as a “paper document”? For sure, we can say it includes bestselling books, newspapers of record, and leading science journals, but what about books that only sold a few thousand copies, small-town newspapers, and third-tier science journals? Are we also counting the mountains of government reports produced and published worldwide in the last century, mostly by obscure agencies and about narrow, bland topics? Equally defensible answers could result in document numbers that are orders of magnitude different.
Also, the term “of interest” provides Kurzweil with an escape hatch because its meaning is subjective. If it were the case that electronic scans of 99% of the books published in the twentieth century were NOT available on the internet in 2019, he could just say “Well, that’s because those books aren’t of interest to modern people” and he could then claim he was right.
It would have been much better if the prediction included a specific metric, like: “By the end of 2019, electronic versions of at least 1 million full-length books written in the twentieth century will be available through the wireless network.” Alas, it doesn’t, and Kurzweil gets this one right on a technicality.
For what it’s worth, I think the prediction was also right in spirit. Millions of books are now available to read online, and that number includes most of the 20th century books that people in 2019 consider important or interesting. One of the biggest repositories of e-books, the “Internet Archive,” has 3.8 million scanned books, and they’re free to view. (Google actually scanned 25 million books with the intent to create something like its own virtual library, but lawsuits from book publishers have put the project into abeyance.)
The New York Times, America’s newspaper of record, has made scans of every one of its issues since its founding in 1851 available online, as have other major newspapers such as the Washington Post. The cursory research I’ve done suggests that all or almost all issues of the biggest American newspapers are now available online, either through company websites or third party sites like newspapers.com.
The U.S. National Archives has scanned over 92 million pages of government documents, and made them available online. Primacy was given to scanning documents that were most requested by researchers and members of the public, so it could easily be the case that most twentieth-century U.S. government paper documents of interest have been scanned. Additionally, in two years the Archives will start requiring all U.S. agencies to submit ONLY digital records, eliminating the very cumbersome middle step of scanning paper, and thenceforth ensuring that government records become available to and easily searchable by the public right away.
The New England Journal of Medicine, the journal Science, and the journal Nature all offer scans of pass issues dating back to their foundings in the 1800s. I lack the time to check whether this is also true for other prestigious academic journals, but I strongly suspect it is. All of the seminal papers documenting the significant scientific discoveries of the 20th century are now available online.
Without a doubt, the internet and a lot of diligent people scanning old books and papers have improved the public’s access to written documents and information by orders of magnitude compared to 1998. It truly is a different world.
“Most learning is accomplished using intelligent software-based simulated teachers. To the extent that teaching is done by human teachers, the human teachers are often not in the local vicinity of the student. The teachers are viewed more as mentors and counselors than as sources of learning and knowledge.”
WRONG*
The technology behind and popularity of online learning and AI teachers didn’t advance as fast as Kurzweil predicted. At the end of 2019, traditional in-person instruction was far more common than and was widely considered to be superior to online learning, though the latter had niche advantages.
However, shortly after 2019 ended, the COVID-19 pandemic forced most of the world into quarantine in an effort to slow the virus’ spread. Schools, workplaces, and most other places where people usually gathered were shut down, and people the world over were forced to do everyday activities remotely. American schools and universities switched to online classrooms in what might be looked at as the greatest social experiment of the decade. For better or worse, most human teachers were no longer in the local vicinity of their students.
Thus, part of Kurzweil’s prediction came true, a few months late and as an unwelcome emergency measure rather than as a voluntary embrasure of a new educational paradigm. Unfortunately, student reactions to online learning have been mostly negative. A 2020 survey found that most college students believed it was harder to absorb knowledge and to learn new skills through online classrooms than it was through in-person instruction. Almost all of them unsurprisingly said that traditional classroom environments were more useful for developing social skills. The survey data I found on the attitudes of high school students showed that most of them considered distance learning to be of inferior quality. Public school teachers and administrators across the country reported higher rates of student absenteeism when schools switched to 100% online instruction, and their support for it measurably dropped as time passed.
The COVID-19 lockdowns have made us confront hard truths about virtual learning. It hasn’t been the unalloyed good that Kurzweil seems to have expected, though technological improvements that make the experience more immersive (ex – faster internet to reduce lag, virtual reality headsets) will surely solve some of the problems that have come to light.
“Students continue to gather together to exchange ideas and to socialize, although even this gathering is often physically and geographically remote.”
RIGHT
As I described at length, traditional in-person classroom instruction remained the dominant educational paradigm in late 2019, which of course means that students routinely gathered together for learning and socializing. The second part of the prediction is also right, since social media, cheaper and better computing devices and internet service, and videophone apps have made it much more common for students of all ages to study, work, and socialize together virtually than they did in 1998.
“All students use computation. Computation in general is everywhere, so a student’s not having a computer is rarely an issue.”
MOSTLY RIGHT
First, Kurzweil’s use of “all” was clearly figurative and not literal. If pressed on this back in 1998, surely he would have conceded that even in 2019, students living in Amish communities, living under strict parents who were paranoid technophobes, or living in the poorest slums of the poorest or most war-wrecked country would not have access to computing devices that had any relevance to their schooling.
Second, note the use of “computation” and “computer,” which are very broad in meaning. As I wrote in the first part of this analysis, “A computer is a device that stores and processes data, and executes its programming. Any machine that meets those criteria counts as a computer, regardless of how fast or how powerful it is…something as simple as a pocket calculator, programmable thermostat, or a Casio digital watch counts as a computer.”
With these two caveats in mind, it’s clear that “all students use computation” by default since all people except those in the most deprived environments routinely interact with computing devices. It is also true that “computation in general is everywhere,” and the prediction merely restates this earlier prediction: “Computers are now largely invisible. They are embedded everywhere…” In the most literal sense, most of the prediction is correct.
However, a judgement is harder to make if we consider whether the spirit of the prediction has been fulfilled. In context, the prediction’s use of “computation” and “computer” surely refers to devices that let students efficiently study materials, watch instructional videos, and do complex school assignments like writing essays and completing math equations. These devices would have also required internet access to perform some of those key functions. At least in the U.S., virtually all schools in late 2019 have computer terminals with speedy internet access that students can use for free. A school without either of those would be considered very unusual. Likewise, almost all of the country’s public libraries have public computer terminals and internet service (and, of course, books), which people can use for their studies and coursework if they don’t have computers or internet in their homes.
At the same time, 17% of students in the U.S. still don’t have computers in their homes and 18% have no internet access or very slow service (there’s probably large overlap between people in those two groups). Mostly this is because they live in remote areas where it isn’t profitable for telecom companies to install high-speed internet lines, or because they belong to extremely poor or disorganized households. This lack of access to computers and internet service results in measurably worse academic performance, a phenomenon called the “homework gap” or the “digital gap.” With this in mind, it’s questionable whether the prediction’s last claim, that “a student’s not having a computer is rarely an issue” has come true.
“Most adult human workers spend the majority of their time acquiring new skills and knowledge.”
WRONG
This is so obviously wrong that I don’t need to present any data or studies to support my judgement. With a tiny number of exceptions, employed adults spend most of their time at work using the same skills over and over to do the same set of tasks. Yes, today’s jobs are more knowledge-based and technology-based than ever before, and a greater share of jobs require formal degrees and training certificates than ever, but few professions are so complex or fast-changing that workers need to spend most of their time learning new skills and knowledge to keep up.
In fact, since the Age of Spiritual Machines was published, a backlash against the high costs and necessity of postsecondary education–at least as it is in America–has arisen. Sentiment is growing that the four-year college degree model is wasteful, obsolete for most purposes, and leaves young adults saddled with debts that take years to repay. Sadly, I doubt these critics will succeed bringing about serious reforms to the system.
If and when we reach the point where a postsecondary degree is needed just to get a respectably entry-level job, and then merely keeping that job or moving up to the next rung on the career ladder requires workers to spend more than half their time learning new skills and knowledge–whether due to competition from machines that keep getting better and taking over jobs or due to the frequent introductions of new technologies that human workers must learn to use–then I predict a large share of humans will become chronically demoralized and will drop out of the workforce. This is a phenomenon I call “job automation escape velocity,” and intend to discuss at length in a future blog post.
“Blind persons routinely use eyeglass-mounted reading-navigation systems, which incorporate the new, digitally controlled, high-resolution optical sensors. These systems can read text in the real world, although since most print is now electronic, print-to-speech reading is less of a requirement. The navigation function of these systems, which emerged about ten years ago, is now perfected. These automated reading-navigation assistants communicate to blind users through both speech and tactile indicators. These systems are also widely used by sighted persons since they provide a high-resolution interpretation of the visual world.”
PARTLY RIGHT
As stated previously, AR glasses have not yet been successful on the commercial market and are used by almost no one, blind or sighted. However, there are smartphone apps meant for blind people that use the phone’s camera to scan what is in front of the person, and they have the range of functions Kurzweil described. For example, the “Seeing AI” app can recognize text and read it out loud to the user, and can recognize common objects and familiar people and verbally describe or name them.
Additionally, there are other smartphone apps, such as “BlindSquare,” which use GPS and detailed verbal instructions to guide blind people to destinations. It also describes nearby businesses and points of interest, and can warn users of nearby curbs and stairs.
Apps that are made specifically for blind people are not in wide usage among sighted people.
“Retinal and vision neural implants have emerged but have limitations and are used by only a small percentage of blind persons.”
MOSTLY RIGHT
Retinal implants exist and can restore limited vision to people with certain types of blindness. However, they provide only a very coarse level of sight, are expensive, and require the use of body-worn accessories to collect, process, and transmit visual data to the eye implant itself. The “Argus II” device is the only retinal implant system available in the U.S., and the FDA approved it in 2013. As of this writing, the manufacturer’s website claimed that only 350 blind people worldwide used the systems, which indeed counts as “only a small percentage of blind persons.”
The meaning of “vision neural implants” is unclear, but could only refer to devices that connect directly to a blind person’s optic nerve or brain vision cortex. While some human medical trials are underway, none of the implants have been approved for general use, nor does that look poised to change.
“Deaf persons routinely read what other people are saying through the deaf persons’ lens displays.”
MOSTLY WRONG
“Lens displays” is clearly referring to those inside augmented reality glasses and AR contact lenses, so the prediction says that a person wearing such eyewear would be able to see speech subtitles across his or her field of vision. While there is at least one model of AR glasses–the Vuzix Blade–that has this capability, almost no one uses them because, as I explored in part 1 of this review, AR glasses failed on the commercial market. By extension, this means the prediction also failed to come true since it specified that deaf people would “routinely” wear AR glasses by 2019.
However, in the prediction’s defense, deaf people commonly use real-time speech-to-text apps on their smartphones. While not as convenient as having captions displayed across one’s field of view, it still makes communication with non-deaf people who don’t know sign language much easier. Google, Apple, and many other tech companies have fielded high-quality apps of this nature, some of which are free to download. Deaf people can also type words into their smartphones and show them to people who can’t understand sign language, which is easier than the old-fashioned method of writing things down on notepad pages and slips of paper.
Additionally, video chat / video phone technology is widespread and has been a boon to deaf people. By allowing callers to see each other, video calls let deaf people remotely communicate with each other through sign language, facial expressions and body movements, letting them experience levels of nuanced dialog that older text-based messaging systems couldn’t convey. Video chat apps are free or low-cost, and can deliver high-quality streaming video, and the apps can be used even on small devices like smartphones thanks to their forward-facing cameras.
In conclusion, while the specifics of the prediction were wrong, the general sentiment that new technologies, specifically portable devices, would greatly benefit deaf people was right. Smartphones, high-speed internet, and cheap webcams have made deaf people far more empowered in 2019 than they were in 1998.
“There are systems that provide visual and tactile interpretations of other auditory experiences such as music, but there is debate regarding the extent to which these systems provide an experience comparable to that of a hearing person.”
RIGHT
There is an Apple phone app called “BW Dance” meant for the deaf that converts songs into flashing lights and vibrations that are said to approximate the notes of the music. However, there is little information about the app and it isn’t popular, which makes me think deaf people have not found it worthy of buying or talking about. Though apparently unsuccessful, the existence of the BW Dance app meets all the prediction’s criteria. The prediction says nothing about whether the “systems” will be popular among deaf people by 2019–it just says the systems will exist.
That’s probably an unsatisfying answer, so let me mention some additional research findings. A company called “Not Impossible Labs” sells body suits designed for deaf people that convert songs into complex patterns of vibrations transmitted into the wearer’s body through 24 different touch points. The suits are well-reviewed, and it’s easy to believe that they’d provide a much richer sensory experience than a buzzing smartphone with the BW Dance app would. However, the suits lack any sort of displays, meaning they don’t meet the criterion of providing users a visual interpretation of songs.
There are many “music visualization” apps that create patterns of shapes, colors, and lines to convey the musical structures of songs, and some deaf people report they are useful in that role. It would probably be easy to combine a vibrating body suit with AR glasses to provide wearers with immersive “visual and tactile interpretations” of music. The technology exists, but the commercial demand does not.
“Cochlear and other implants for improving hearing are very effective and are widely used.”
RIGHT
Since receiving FDA approval in 1984, cochlear implants have significantly improved in quality and have become much more common among deaf people. While the level of benefit widely varies from one user to another, the average user ends us hearing well enough to carry on a phone conversation in a quiet room. That means cochlear implants are “very effective” for most people who use them, since the alternative is usually having no sense of hearing at all. Cochlear implants are in fact so effective that they’ve spurred fears among deaf people that they will eradicate the Deaf culture and end the use of sign language, leading some deaf people to reject the devices even though their senses would benefit.
Other types of implants for improving hearing also exist, including middle ear implants, bone-anchored hearing aids, and auditory brainstem implants. While some of these alternatives are more optimal for people with certain hearing impairments, they haven’t had the same impact on the Deaf community as cochlear implants.
“Paraplegic and some quadriplegic persons routinely walk and climb stairs through a combination of computer-controlled nerve stimulation and exoskeletal robotic devices.”
WRONG
Paraplegics and quadriplegics use the same wheelchairs they did in 1998, and they can only traverse stairs that have electronic lift systems. As noted in my Prometheus review, powered exoskeletons exist today, but almost no one uses them, probably due to very high costs and practical problems. Some rehabilitation clinics for people with spinal cord and leg injuries use therapeutic techniques in which the disabled person’s legs and spine are connected to electrodes that activate in sequences that assist them to walk, but these nerve and muscle stimulation devices aren’t used outside of those controlled settings. To my knowledge, no one has built the sort of prosthesis that Kurzweil envisioned, which was a powered exoskeleton that also had electrodes connected to the wearer’s body to stimulate leg muscle movements.
“Generally, disabilities such as blindness, deafness, and paraplegia are not noticeable and are not regarded as significant.”
WRONG (sadly)
As noted, technology has not improved the lives of disabled people as much as Kurzweil predicted they would between 1998 and 2019. Blind people still need to use walking canes, most deaf people don’t have hearing implants of any sort (and if they do, their hearing is still much worse than average), and paraplegics still use wheelchairs. Their disabilities are noticeable often at a glance, and always after a few moments of face-to-face interaction.
Blindness, deafness, and paraplegia still have many significant negative impacts on people afflicted with them. As just one example, employment rates and average incomes for working-age people with those infirmities are all lower than they are for people without. In 2019, the U.S. Social Security program still viewed those conditions as disabilities and paid welfare benefits to people with them.
Links:
- There were fewer than 1 million augmented reality glasses in the world at the end of 2019. https://arinsider.co/2019/09/11/5-million-ar-headsets-by-2023/
- Sales of print books in 2017 were not much different from what they probably were in 1999, when the Age of Spiritual Machines was published. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/75735-sales-of-print-books-increased-slightly-in-2017.html
- Sales figures for “graphic paper” prove that, while paper books, newspapers, and office documents are declining, they aren’t “dead” or even “uncommon” yet. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/paper-forest-products-and-packaging/our-insights/graphic-paper-producers-boosting-resilience-amid-the-covid-19-crisis
- The “Internet Archive” has scans of 3.8 million books, and is growing. https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-internet-archive-is-linking-digital-books-to-wikipedia-citations
- By late 2019, the U.S. National Archives had put 92 million pages of government documents on its website, free for anyone to view. https://narations.blogs.archives.gov/2019/10/02/naras-record-group-explorer-a-new-path-into-naras-holdings/
- The 2020 report COVID-19 on Campus found that most U.S. college students found online instruction an inferior way to learn compared to traditional classroom instruction.
https://marketplace.collegepulse.com/img/covid19oncampus_ckf_cp_final.pdf - Another 2020 survey of U.S. teenagers found that most of them considered online learning to be less effective than in-person classes.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/common-sense-media-school-reopening/ - A 2020 survey of U.S. teachers and school administrators found that student absenteeism rates climbed thanks to the introduction of online classes.
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/10/15/in-person-learning-expands-student-absences-up-teachers.html - A U.S. Census survey found in 2019 that 17% of students didn’t have computers in their homes and 18% had no internet access or very slow service.
https://apnews.com/article/7f263b8f7d3a43d6be014f860d5e4132 - The “Seeing AI” smartphone app uses the device’s camera to recognize text, objects and people and to read, describe, or name them out loud. Blind users have highly reviewed it.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seeing-ai/id999062298#see-all/reviews - The “BlindSquare” smartphone app provides voice-based GPS navigation to users, and is also highly reviewed by blind people.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blindsquare/id500557255#see-all/reviews - The FDA approves the “Argus II” retinal implant system for the blind in 2013.
https://www.nature.com/news/fda-approves-first-retinal-implant-1.12439 - In 2019, an app called “Zoi Meet” was developed for the Vuzix Blade AR glasses. The app produces real-time subtitles of spoken words, displayed across the wearer’s field of vision.
https://www.vuzix.com/Blog/vuzix-blade-real-time-language-transcription-zoi-meet - In 2019, there were many smartphone apps that helped deaf people to communicate with hearing people.
https://www.meriahnichols.com/best-deaf-apps/
https://abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/9-useful-apps-people-who-are-deaf-or-have-hearing-loss - “Glide” is a popular video phone app among deaf people.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3054050/how-video-chat-app-glide-got-deaf-people-talking - “BW Dance” is an app that converts songs into patterns of vibrations that flashing lights that deaf people can experience.
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bw-dance - “Not Impossible Labs” makes body suits that allow deaf people to experience music in the form of complex patterns of vibrations.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8476553/not-impossible-labs-live-music-deaf - Cochlear implants have gotten better and more common among deaf people as time has passed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4111484/ - U.S. sales growth of cochlear implants is projected to continue.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/cochlear-implants-industry - Aside from cochlear implants, middle ear implants, auditory brainstem implants, and bone-anchored hearing aids can amplify or restore hearing.
https://www.bcig.org.uk/cochlear-implant-devices/implantable-devices/ - People who are blind, or deaf, or who have serious spinal cord damage are less likely to have jobs and also make less money than people who don’t have those conditions.
https://www.afb.org/research-and-initiatives/employment/reviewing-disability-employment-research-people-blind-visually
https://www.nationaldeafcenter.org/news/employment-report-shows-strong-labor-market-passing-deaf-americans
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792457/