He sees the future - and it's amazing

Move over, Nostradamus. Ray's taking over as top prognosticator.

You remember Nostradamus? That controversial figure in Tsarist Russia whose predictions for centuries to come are still coming true. Next to Ray Kurzweil - Google's clean-shaven director of engineering - the old bearded Russian is looking outdated. And Kurzweil's predictions are not all about technology (but most are).

Yes, Kurzweil predicted when an Internet would become central to daily life - back in the 1980s when few believed him. He predicted with startling accuracy when a computer could beat a world chess champion - eight years before it happened. But he also predicted the dismantling of what became of Nostradamus' old stomping ground, the Soviet Union.

This middle aged maverick grew up in New York. His parents were also creative, but in different ways. The son of a conductor and an artist, he wrote his first computer program in 1963 at age 15, was educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame with his trifecta of the world's first flatbed image scanner, first orchestral music synthesizer, and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind (Stevie Wonder bought one and befriended Kurzweil).

OK, so what does Google's genius clairvoyant say is coming?

1. Immortality? Well, close anyway, including backing up immune systems with nanobots in residence in our bodies, and backing up our brains to the Cloud. Really - as in cyberspace.

2. Self-driving cars: We're talking for sale in 2017, not just Google's experimentals. A few more years and we won't need to own them; we will just order them chauffeur-style from our smartphones and one will arrive to pick us up. No more DUIs?

3. My favorite: Switch off fat cells, by 2020. Our bodies' food storage mechanisms are far less necessary than the days before mod cons such as refrigerators and preservatives, so our overeating of three meals daily (beyond chips and sugar, i.e. far more meat than we require), results in obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Solution: genetic re-engineering, already tried with animals who ate gobs without gaining. Of course we'll still need the discipline to eat healthily. And by 2040, stay young much longer thanks to those nanobots in our immune systems, which will extend our lives at a faster rate than we age.

4. Print your own clothes: By 2020, thanks to now-existing 3D printers which will be more affordable and versatile and be able to "print" (make) darned near everything do-it-yourself. He envisions downloaded fashion designs, some free. I do detest shopping and fewer factories mean less pollution, but where will we all work?

5. VR 4-D. Or five... Think virtual reality games with images surrounding you, including their touch and smell, by 2023. Not just for fun; could have training applications, too.

6. Vertical, robot-run, no-impact farms. Yup, artificially created (but living) animal tissue, veggies and grains, everything recycled, in skyscrapers by 2030.

7. Solar energy. Period. 2033. Nanotechnology and other improvements are making solar panels less costly worldwide. And as Kurzweil told MIT classmate Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel's prime minister), we have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need. Imagine a world not dependent on coal, gas, and oil. That leaves just religion and oppression to fight over - both less appealing causes in healthier economies (without the politics of resource fuels). One down, two to go.

Kurzweil takes more than 100 vitamins daily, hoping to stay alive until we catch up with prediction number one. Since he's working on most of his own projects, let's hope the vitamins work. But I'm not holding my breath for a fountain of youth, and my little Earth-bound brain is staying right where it is.

Thanks to reader Nick Smoot for the topic suggestion.

Sholeh Patrick is a screen-weary, smartphone-hating, Neo-Luddite columnist for the Hagadone News Network who misses hand-written letters, private diaries (no, everyone doesn't want to read your blog, tweets, and posts) and thinking-before-texting. Contact her at [email protected].