Inventor, entrepreneur, and eminent futurist Ray Kurzweil, whose books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near are perhaps the most well-known texts on the outcome of accelerating change.

Kurzweil has been one of the world’s leading futurists for over two decades, and also boasts a long record of technological achievement and business success dating back to his childhood.

Kurzweil became Google’s director of engineering at the end of 2012, and in this role he will help the company develop the most advanced technology in the world  — no modest responsibility in a company that’s already produced self-driving cars and augmented-reality glasses. […]