| Posted: June 2, 2010 |
'The Singularity is Near' premieres at Breckenridge Film Festival |
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(Nanowerk News) "The Singularity is Near: A True Story About the Future" by filmmakers Anthony Waller, Ray Kurzweil, Ehren Koepf and Toshi Hoo, with Executive Producer Martine Rothblatt (Terasem Motion InfoCulture), makes its world premiere on Saturday, June 12, 2010 at the 30th Annual Breckenridge Film Festival. The film is among 51 films screening at the four day festival and will compete in the documentary film category.
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The feature-length documentary film presents the daring arguments from Kurzweil's New York Times bestselling book, "The Singularity is Near." He predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become trillions of times more powerful and increasingly merged with computers. This will be the dawning of a new civilization, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil's post-biological world, boundaries blur between human and machine, real and virtual. Human aging and illness are reversed, world hunger and poverty are solved, and we cure death. He maintains a radically optimistic view of the future course of human development while acknowledging profound new dangers.
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"Kurzweil is the best person I know at predicting the future," according to Bill Gates. "Kurzweil envisions a future in which information technologies have advanced so far and fast that they enable humanity to transcend its biological limitations--transforming our lives in ways we can't yet imagine."
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Kurzweil examines the social and philosophical implications of these profound changes and the potential threats they pose to human civilization in dialogues with big thinkers, including former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke; technologists Bill Joy, Mitch Kapor, Marvin Minsky, Eric Drexler, Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal; Future Shock author Alvin Toffler; civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz; venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and environmentalist Bill McKibben. Kurzweil illustrates the future with a narrative story about an "AI" seeking her human rights, featuring popular NCIS actress Pauley Perrette and personal development guru Tony Robbins. The movie, The Singularity Is Near offers a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
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BRECKENRIDGE FESTIVAL OF FILM PREMIERE SCREENING
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The Singularity Is Near will premiere Saturday, June 12th, 3:00 p.m. at the Breckenridge Theater (operating as the Backstage Theater), located at 121 South Ridge Street, Breckenridge, CO 80424. A discussion with Ray Kurzweil will immediately follow the screening. Festival passes are available now at: http://www.breckfilmfest.com/home/ticketinfo.php or by phone at (970) 547-3100. For more information: http://www.breckfilmfest.com.
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About Breckenridge Festival of Film
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The Breckenridge Festival of Film, now in its 30th year, is one of the oldest in the country. The 2010 festival runs June 10-13 and will feature 51 independent films, including feature-length narratives, documentaries, shorts and a student film program. The Breckenridge Festival of Film is a 501(c)(3) private, non-profit organization governed by a volunteer board of directors.
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For more information, visit www.breckfilmfest.com or call 970-453-6200.
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About Ray Kurzweil
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Inventor Ray Kurzweil is one of the world's leading futurists, with a 20 year track record of accurate predictions. Called the "restless genius" by The Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." Inventor of the first CCD flat bed scanner and many other firsts, Kurzweil is an inductee in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world's largest for innovation), and 19 honorary doctorates and awards from three U.S. presidents.
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