Ray Kurzweil to head futurology school backed by Nasa and Google

An American inventor who plans to live forever has been appointed head of a new school for futurologists backed by Google and the US space agency Nasa.Ray Kurzweil, who worked as a computer scientist before turning to future gazing in the late 1980s, will become chancellor of the Singularity University based at Nasa's Silicon Valley campus in California.The institution gains its name from a controversial 2005 book by Kurzweil, entitled The Singularity is Near. In it, he argues that the exponential advance of technology is set to transform society by giving rise to computers that are more clever than humans. The leap in computing power will drive rapid advances in other fields, he claims, that together could solve the problems of climate change, poverty, famine and disease.In an earlier book, Kurzweil predicts the creation of "nanobots" that will patrol our bloodstreams, repairing wear and tear as they go, and keeping...

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