The future, just around the bend (19 Mar 2005)

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The future, just around the bend (19 Mar 2005)
Blame it on Tom Swift. For it was Swift, the fictional teenage genius who repeatedly saved the world with his scientific savvy, who inspired Ray Kurzweil to become the inventor, engineer and prognosticator he is today. “I started reading those books when I was about nine years old, and couldn't put them down,” he says. It wasn't just the solartrons, diving seacopters and triphibian atomicars that mesmerised him; it was the way the irrepressible Swift applied his mind, and the technology it conceived, to solve human, often personal, problems. “I was smitten by the power of ideas to change the world,” says Mr Kurzweil.

Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3714070

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