Inventor and, well, “visionary” Ray Kurzweil offers some predictions that are interesting in the context of a developing noosphere. Putting near term dates on things is a good marketing move, but don’t put money on ’em.

“Computer visionary Ray Kurzweil examined the effects of accelerating growth of technologies on the present and future of human technological innovation during a speech at the ninth annual CRN Industry Hall of Fame, held Tuesday in Santa Clara, Calif…By 2010, Kurzweil said, computers will begin to disappear, instead becoming embedded in the environment and into materials such as clothing and eyeglasses. Images will be written directly on human retinas, said Kurzweil, adding that the military uses this technology today in modeling virtual reality environments. “Search engines of the near future won’t wait to be asked for information,” he said.

“2029 is where technology really gets interesting because we’ll have had all of this exponential growth taking place over the next 25 years,” said Kurzweil. By this time, computation will move from the device and become Web-centric. “There is going to be a worldwide mesh consisting of tiny devices, nodes in clothing and in the environment, each sending and receiving their own messages, as well as passing on other peoples’ messages,” Kurzweil said. Organization on the massive worldwide mesh will be much like that of the traditional Internet, in terms of being self-organizing and every device being a node, he added.

http://informationweek.desktoppipeline.com/pcs/174300450