The predictions for 2016 seem to have ceased at this point in January, so today I found it a life prize to share in the same hotel room in Los Angeles with Ray Kurzweil and hear his.
With that particular condition that his credentials give him, among which stands out an 86% accuracy rate in his well-documented predictions, Ray estimates that by 2033 all viral and bacterial diseases will have been eradicated, just as cancer will have been cured.
In his vision of the future, which includes a studied projection of the exponential effect driven particularly by technology, this extraordinary and celebrated visionary -among other contributions, creator of the image scanner and OCR- anticipates that every person born after the year 2000 will have a life expectancy of 100 years or more, based on early diagnosis that can even be facilitated by nanorobots injected into the blood.
Given our pervasive ability to think in linear and local terms, it is difficult for us to anticipate the speed of global change and the future trajectory of the dizzying transformation to which we are exposed today. For this reason, it is not easy to think that soon a low-income child and another from a privileged cradle, in London or Golfito, will have exactly the same teacher -incidentally the best in the world- thanks to artificial intelligence.
Today a Tesla car is self-driving on highways, while drones are emerging in all kinds of applications. Advances are intensifying in image recognition, including augmented and virtual reality, holograms, crowd sourcing, all happening while our hearts are beating right now. The effective and pragmatic convergence of all the aforementioned and much more, also exponentially potentiates everything we can imagine and what not. This is tangible and palpable, this is not fiction.
With this reality on our blue planet changing at the speed of light, a thinker like Kurzweil amazes with his predictions. At the same time, listening to him, I cannot help but be alarmed at how distant our own sluggish reality in Costa Rica is compared to the latest and greatest. To put it in Costa Rican: we have to pinch ourselves or we’re going to get our snouts caught in the cadejos.
Costa Ricans of all privilege and recognition, we must wake up from our stagnation and tranquility. The moment is not for us to be distracted by nonsense and calls first to personal decisions, because no one can live life for one. It is up to each one of us to give the best of ourselves, and then give the maximum collectively.
Let no one expect something for free. Let no one do anything else other than to fight for it, leaving their skin on the field if necessary. Let there be no dream without maximum dedicated effort, and let there be no young person who does not take advantage of the opportunity of life when breathing. I believe that if you have a body you are an athlete, and if you have a mind you are a genius. If you have a spirit you believe that nothing is impossible – because God exists and we can feel him – and if you have a heart you have to give everything passionately.
If you are going to be criticized, let it be for your virtues. If you are going to be applauded, let it be for your achievements. If you are going to be booed, let it be for making a mistake by pressing you. If they are going to use you for mockery, sarcasm or jokes, let it be for envy. If there is one thing you cannot forgive yourself, however, it is not having given your best.
Do you have a little more time? Here I leave you with Ray and his proposal on hybrid thinking for all inspiration (you can include subtitles by choosing the language in the lower right corner).
My prediction for 2016 is one: it will be the best year of our lives, as a result of people giving their all and as never before in life. May no one take away your mission, focus and obsession: make it the best year of your life so far.
May it be so.
