When futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil says something, I pay attention. So I was pleasantly surprised when, in a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Kurzweil said he expects humans will live forever.

The Director of Engineering for Google and inventor of the Kurzweil speech recognition software used by thousands of schools, Ray Kurzweil is also known for making bold – and uncannily accurate – predictions about the future. As early as the nineteen-eighties he predicted that by the year 2000, computer chess programs would beat the best human players, that we would see “explosive growth” of worldwide Internet usage, and that cellular phones would shrink in size and gain in popularity.

These ideas may sound obvious today, perhaps even simplistic. But as someone who remembers being in awe of bag phones, dial-up modems, and floppy disks (the big ones), I can assure you this was not always the case. […]