February 21, 2008

Futurist/Inventor Ray Kurzweil Delivers GDC 2008 Keynote

San Francisco - Today, celebrated inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil delivers a keynote address at the 2008 Game Developers Conference (GDC) inspiring attendees to take a dramatic look at the future of games and electronic entertainment. Described as “the rightful heir to Thomas Edison” by Inc magazine and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes, Kurzweil will speak to the GDC audience about the next two decades of videogames and what the landscape may look like come GDC 2028.

"Bringing the future to life today has always been at the heart of the game industry, so it's essential to have our vision refreshed by one of our greatest living thinkers," says Jamil Moledina, executive director of the Game Developers Conference. "As a technology inventor and prophetic visionary, Ray Kurzweil is that rare individual who can inspire the next evolutionary step forward in what games can do."

Ray Kurzweil has been recognized as an intellectual pioneer by some of the most respected American media sources. As one of the leading inventors of our time, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first CCD flatbed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition.

Kurzweil also is the recipient of the $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize, the world's largest award for innovation. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. In 2002, he was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, established by the US Patent Office. He has received 15 honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. Kurzweil has written five books, four of which have been national best sellers.

The keynote, “The Next 20 Years of Gaming,” is scheduled for today, February 21, from 10:30 am to 11:30 am PST in the Esplanade Room of the Moscone Center’s South Hall.