Editor 's note : The staff at CNN.com has recently been intrigued by the journalism of Vice , an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn , New York . VBS.TV is Vice 's broadband television network . The reports , which are produced solely by Vice , reflect a very transparent approach to journalism , where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process . We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers . Brooklyn , New York ( VBS.TV ) -- In the year 2050 , if Ray Kurzweil is right , nanoscopic robots will be zooming throughout our capillaries , transforming us into nonbiological humans . We will be able to absorb and retain the entirety of the universe 's knowledge , eat as much as we want without gaining weight , shape-shift into just about any physical form imaginable , live free from disease and die at the time of our choosing . All of this will be thrust on us by something that Kurzweil calls the Singularity , a theorized point in time in the not-so-distant future when machines become vastly superior to humans in every way , aka the emergence of true artificial intelligence . Computers will be able to improve their own source codes and hardware in ways we puny humans could never conceive . This will result in a paradigm shift that sees mankind coalescing with its own creations : man and machine , merging into one . These grand-scale premonitions are largely based on Kurzweil 's law of accelerating returns , which states that the development of technology has been increasing exponentially since the beginning of time . That concept is n't really compelling to the masses until one focuses on the `` knee '' of this exponential curve -- the point where the perpetual doubling of technological growth skyrockets and negates the linear models of progress that people like economists have relied on for so long . Kurzweil says we 're just about to start rounding this bend and that the rate of progress will be so great it will `` appear to rupture the fabric of human history . '' In other words , we will trump nature and take control of our own evolution . Kurzweil 's magnum opus , `` The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology , '' outlines the implications of this transition in a way that is simultaneously believable , terrifying , meticulous and mind-bendingly absurd . It was published in 2005 . That may seem like only a short time ago , but an incoming technological explosion of nuclear proportions is n't so far-fetched when you consider everything that 's changed just between then and now . Twitter , iPhones , the comment on the Facebook wall as the new pickup line ? The devices and programs we were using four years ago already seem outdated . `` Transcendent Man , '' a documentary about Kurzweil by filmmaker Barry Ptolemy that was released digitally last week , offers a revealing glimpse inside Kurzweil 's mind and elaborates on some of the ideas found in `` The Singularity is Near . '' See the rest of `` The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil '' at Motherboard.tv . People like to tag Kurzweil as the `` rightful heir to Thomas Edison , '' and that 's not a stretch considering he 's responsible for some of the most useful inventions of the past century . An optical-character-recognition machine for the blind that 's capable of reading most types of printed text aloud , the CCD flatbed scanner , speech-recognition software , the first synthesizer that created sounds virtually indistinguishable from those produced by their acoustic counterparts , and a whole bunch of other nifty things we can barely comprehend came from Ray 's brain . When I met Kurzweil at his office in Boston , he was dressed in a slightly crumpled navy suit jacket and slacks . As he emerged from the columns of books surrounding his desk , he seemed almost meek and startled even though he had postponed our interview by over half an hour . But after speaking with him for two minutes I would n't have been surprised if he told me that he had already received artificial neural enhancements and other biological upgrades . His intelligence operates on a higher plane , but his true gift is the ability to distill his complex theories into easily digestible terms . Regardless if you agree with Kurzweil 's ideas , he certainly knows more than a few things that the majority of us do n't . We 'd be really foolish not to listen as closely as possible .
Ray Kurzweil is an inventor , scientist , author and futurist . He predicts future in which technology will be superior to science . Point at which man and machine merge into one is referred to by him as ` ` singularity ''