virtual reality

Newsweek has published a fascinating profile of Raymond Kurzweil, looking at his inventions and his predictions for the future.

Kurzweil is best known to musicians for creating the Kurzweil keyboard – but he’s also a pioneer in the world of optical character recognition and text-to-speech software, and has created a new career for himself as a futurist:

Kurzweil believes computer intelligence is advancing so rapidly that in a couple of decades, machines will be as intelligent as humans. Soon after that they will surpass humans and start creating even smarter technology.

He also thinks we’ll be able to embed our consciousness into silicon, which means we can live on, inside machines, forever and ever, amen.

Kurzweil calls this moment “The Singularity,” and says it represents the next great leap in human evolution, when humans will transcend biology by merging with technology. Kurzweil truly believes this is going to happen—and he can’t wait to be part of it. All he has to do is stay alive until 2045, when he believes the necessary technologies will be available. So he lives on a strict diet, and every day he swallows 150 dietary supplements in order to “reprogram” his body’s biochemistry.

He also has a female virtual alter-ego, Ramona, above right, who’s the Barbie of futurism.

“I’m smarter, I write and perform my own music, and I’m as real as you!”, claims Ramona. Read more…

Musolomo is a free sampler instrument thatlets you capture sound interactively and play it back how you want it, looping, changing it’s melody, rhythm and organisation.

Key Features

• It’s free.
• Sample, copy, and erase without the need to look at a computer screen.
• Peripheral vision feedback design (the flashing border)
• Record and play sync before and after play and record!
• Revolutionary Digi Skip technology, allowing time-jumping
• Speedster inspired technology for timestretching to
  host tempo, re-pitching
• Legato, Bo, Scratchet, tape speed and (the cool) Freeze
• Autolooper allowing very easy on-the-fly loop making
• Play through modes great for ‘break-downs’
• Handy in-built help screen
• MIDI-assignable

Here’s a demo of Musolomo being controlled with a virtual reality glove. F’d up!