From one perspective, the future looks bright at the American Visionary Art Museum, where the exhibition “Human, Soul and Machine: The Coming Singularity” explores man’s tenuous relationship with technology.

According to the futurist author and inventor Ray Kurzweil — who is featured in a 79-minute documentary that loops continuously as part of the show and who will be honored with the museum’s Grand Visionary Award next month — solar power will provide all of our energy needs, perhaps in as soon as 20 years.

Other projections he makes about the coming golden age of technology are equally sanguine. […]