I saw a talk by Matt Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist, and it was quite interesting. One interesting question posed was whether Ridley believed in R

I saw a talk by Matt Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist, and it was quite interesting. One interesting question posed was whether Ridley believed in Ray Kurzweil's singularity theory. He responded that he believed futurists are looking at the wrong area of technology as the center of advancement in the next 50 to 100 years. Just as futurists from previous eras predicted huge advancements in transportation (like flying cars), because transportation happened to be booming at the time, current futurists focus too much on communication, and assume it will continue to advance at the same rate. He predicts that advancement in communication will slow down in the future, to be replaced by another area, such as, for example, biotech.