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Since June, a number of international auto companies and electronics companies are using large-scale lithium battery joint investment competition. This includes the Toyota and Matsushita, Nissan and NEC, the public and Sanyo, Bosch and Samsung, they believe that lithium batteries in the coming years will gradually replace the nickel-metal hydride batteries, lead the direction of development of hybrid vehicles. At a time when Chinese auto companies are working to develop the nickel metal hydride battery assembly of hybrid cars in order to focus on display during the Beijing Olympics.

According to report, the stability of lithium batteries due to fears from the “15″ begins, in the new energy vehicle development process, not to focus the direction of lithium, but chose Ni-MH battery.

June 26, the National 863 Program, “Energy-saving and new energy vehicles,” major projects team leader Ouyang Ming Gao said in an interview, in lithium batteries, the domestic and foreign advanced level yet. Alone no problem in terms of battery materials, the performance of a single cell is not worse than the advanced international level. But the composition of the battery pack, its stability, consistency of production, service life, there are still big problems.

Lithium War

According to public reports, in order to reduce risks and improve technology industrial efficiency, a number of international car manufacturers and electronics manufacturers have chosen the way of co-energy lithium battery of new car development.

Toyota and Matsushita’s Panasonic EV Energy joint venture company will build two hybrid battery manufacturing plant, from 2009 production of lithium batteries, and Toyota are scheduled to assemble the first car in 2010 sold plug-in hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid power car battery can be charged by domestic supply.

A global leader in lithium battery production – Sanyo Electric Co. will start mass production car by the end of 2009 lithium batteries, jointly developed with public control. In addition to the general public, the Sanyo is also with Ford and Honda to develop lithium batteries. Sanyo’s goal is to 2015, occupation of the global car market with more than 40% share of the lithium battery. Sanyo also can be used to speed up the development of a plug-in hybrid electric cars lithium battery, and strive to begin selling the product in 2011.

Nissan and NEC announced joint production of lithium batteries, and plans to launch in 2010 assembly lithium battery electric vehicle.

General Motors and South Korea’s LG Chemical Company’s CompactPower companies and Continental Automotive Systems signed a contract two lithium batteries.

Japan’s GS Yuasa, Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has invested 3 billion yen (about 190 million yuan) build a Japanese lithium Energy (LithiumEnergyJapan). Mitsubishi Motors will begin selling in 2009, hybrid vehicles, and in mid-2010, sales of pure electric vehicles.

With the formation of the capacity of these investments is gradually released in 2012, the lithium is likely to replace the nickel-metal hydride batteries. Vice president of Geely Automobile Research Zhang Tong told reporters, according to his understanding, this year, Mercedes will have lithium batteries for hybrid assembly of a type listed.

China line

Previously, the stability of the domestic industry are generally considered poor lithium use may occur because of spontaneous combustion temperature is too high, the actual trial in domestic enterprises, also have occurred in vehicles equipped with lithium burning case, therefore, not be lithium batteries as a key R & D direction, but chose Ni-MH battery. It is understood that “10

Five “period, the nickel-hydrogen battery R & D investment is much greater than lithium batteries. However, large multinational corporations mean that domestic investment in lithium-related technology may have to re-route options?

Domestic research and development of hybrid type, such as FAW Pentium hybrid, SAIC Roewe 750 hybrid Chery A5 hybrid, hybrid, etc. Long An Jiexun are using nickel metal hydride batteries.

However, even technical line to adjust the short term is difficult to catch up with international advanced level.

Zhang Tong said that according to his understanding, the international advanced level of control on the lithium battery has been sympathetically, about to break through the bottleneck stability. According to the business community to reflect the domestic lithium battery materials, batteries monomer / component processing technology, control of key technologies such as batteries still awaiting a breakthrough. Moreover, the issue of consistency of production has not fully resolved, does not have the production capacity.

So far, China has no battery joint research and development companies and auto companies situation. “Eleventh Five-Year” Plan 863 “energy saving and new energy vehicles,” major projects, the participation of lithium battery research and development of enterprises and research institutions include: Beijing Nonferrous Metal Research Institute, Suzhou Star Constant Power Co., Ltd., Tianjin Lishen Battery Co., Ltd. and CITIC UNITA solid for the new Energy Technology Co., Ltd..

Zhang Tong said that in the lithium battery field, Chinese enterprises still have a chance. Because our country had to develop consumer electronic products for the lithium battery industry has laid a good foundation conducive to the development of battery in the field.

A welcome change, industrialization has become the “during” the main direction of development of lithium batteries. “Energy saving and new energy auto project,” the general members of the Group, Tongji University Dean of Zhuoping car told reporters that the company take lithium battery R & D projects have also been asked in the “Eleventh Five-Year” end of the formation of a certain amount of production capacity.

Zhuoping that reliability will require substantial funding reform process, additional equipment. “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period, the central government will invest 60 million yuan Li-ion battery development, the company also asked to assume the project inputs in accordance with the ratio of 10 times the matching funds, so that the total investment will reach 600 million yuan. According to report, “15″ period, the lithium battery research and development on the national allocation of funds, only 800 million with local matching funds, only about 16 million yuan.

Although the “Eleventh Five-Year” period of the input greatly increased, but compared to the huge multinational investment, domestic investment remains low. It is understood that only a company’s lithium batteries Sanyo project investment reached 800 billion yen (776.7 million U.S. dollars).

Cross or follow?

The face of new energy vehicles and the overall status of the development of the backward, the industry began to rethink some of China’s automobile industry development strategy by leaps and bounds.

In 2000, just returned near Wan Gang told the State Council put forward the development of clean energy vehicles, China’s auto industry to achieve leapfrog development strategy. The basis of this theory is: in the field of electric vehicles in this new and foreign in our starting line similar level of technology and industrialization gap between the relatively small, vigorously develop a new generation of industrialization as a vehicle to promote the domestic automobile industry by leaps and bounds development of strategic initiatives, there may be a new round of competition in the world automotive industry occupying high ground, to obtain a favorable position to improve the international competitiveness of the domestic auto industry.

Early 2006, when he was “15″ electric vehicle major science and technology projects of the overall team leader, said Wan Gang, Dongfeng, Chang’an, Chery and FAW hybrid electric car from 2006 onwards the market. Chery said in 2007 to achieve the industrialization of hybrid vehicles to achieve 30 000 production.

However, to date, our country has not a mass production hybrid vehicles. By this time, to hybrid Toyota Prius has been known in the global sales of 1 million.

June 26, the National Development and Reform Commission spokesman told reporters that the domestic development of the current line of cars followed the international advanced level is because we in this area beyond and innovative strength is still insufficient. While still upholding the direction of the simultaneous development of multiple technologies, when the direction of adjustment of international development, they can promptly adjust, and will not touch. The hybrid vehicles are on the domestic rate of industrialization is not optimistic.

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The direction of electronic Components Technology Innovation
by Meggie on Sep.06, 2010, under electronics news

The direction of electronic Components Technology Innovation

To speed up our pace of technological innovation of electronic components, electronic components, technology innovation to increase efforts to improve the level of technological innovation of electronic components, electronic components by the producing countries into power, we must understand our country and the world status of electronic components and technological development, market demand, the gap at home and abroad, borrowing from the successful experience. Explore the following key trends in innovation of electronic components.

Capacitors and resistors: chip-based, high-capacity, long life

Ceramic capacitor capacitor in the world market will remain dominant, small size, large capacity, high voltage, high frequency interference and the array of ceramic capacitors will be the development direction, while the products will be ceramic chip capacitors and tantalum capacitors mainstream.

Small size, large capacity, long life, high temperature, low equivalent series resistance (ESR) and other aluminum electrolytic capacitor is still the direction of development. Chip tantalum capacitor products continue to lead to smaller, high-capacity, low impedance, low equivalent series resistance direction, functional polymer tantalum capacitor production and application will be further expanded, tantalum powder CV value will continue to increase. Metallized plastic film capacitors demand will grow for the information and communications equipment, plastic film capacitor market will continue to expand. High frequency, to meet safety standards, high temperature, small size, chip type plastic film capacitor will be the direction of development.

Chip resistor resistor will continue to be the mainstream product, its size will continue to shrink, 0603 type (0.6mm × 0.3mm), will go into large-scale application stage. High resistance, low resistance and high voltage chip resistors needs to expand, the film chip resistor production and application will be further expanded with 2, 4 with a combination of type 1005 chip resistors to debut. High-power, small size, high stability, high precision metal film resistors will continue the development direction, while it will reduce the current noise and increase the added value of digital technology to the development of a metal film resistors, new applications, the precision type, ultra-precision products can not replace the chip resistors, and therefore, it will still have a certain market space. Wirewound resistors to the security of (fire), high precision, small size, direction and low resistance is the note of a trend.

Inductors and Transformers: Small, lightweight, high efficiency

Coils, inductors, chip products market will be driven, technological innovation should be very small, fine, composite direction, chip products should be winding type stacked-type developments in two directions simultaneously.

Electronic Transformer development should be small, thin, lightweight and high efficiency center. Pulse transformer in the field should be small size and surface mounting direction. In the product structure, ring core transformer demand will grow, EI-shaped core transformer demand has decreased, while the growing demand for ferrite core transformers, laminated silicon steel transformer type sharp decline in demand. Flyback transformer outlook, HDTV, large screen, wide screen TV and computer monitor flyback transformer used in the demand will steadily expand. Power | Regulator transformers bright future, computers and peripherals and communications products for the transformer to develop a large market.

Connectors: Small space, high-density, high frequency of

The development of the connector should be smaller, high-density, high-speed, high-frequency direction. Miniaturization is the central connector spacing smaller, high-density core to achieve a large number of. High density pcb (printed circuit board) connectors effective way to reach a total of 600 core items, special devices up to 5000 cores. High-speed transmission is the modern computer, information technology and network technology required time scale of signal transmission rate up to MHz frequency, pulse time to reach sub-millisecond, thus requiring a high-speed connectors. To meet the high-frequency millimeter-wave technology is the development of RF coaxial connectors have access to millimeter wave frequency band.

Switch should be small, thin, lightweight, surface mount, energy saving, high reliability, multi-functional, composite direction, and improve heat resistance, sealing, touch and environmental resistance.

Relay: portfolio, high reliability, small size

Relay in the size and dimensions should be continued miniaturization and chip type. Functions that a single relay switch to the combination of the traditional functions of relay development, assembly by the SMT (surface mount) to the micro-assembly (MPT), microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) direction.

Universal relay should continue to a small, thin plastic and direction. Low-altitude, high sensitivity, high reliability printed circuit board relay with a relay is still the common market mainstream. Reed Relay market continues to expand, the product should be open to the plastic-type direction. High I / O insulating plastic reed relays concern. Application of solid-state relay will be more extensive, the product should be highly reliable, small size, high resistance to shock and high inrush current interference direction. Relays should be dual-use military direction, compatible with IC TO-5 relays and 1 / 2 relay lens cover is still small sealed relay market focus, but should be of high environmental adaptability and high reliability direction development. Multi-contact group, there is still a heavy load of dual-use relay market.

Special Electrical Machines: intelligent, high torque, low power

Micro-motor should continue to the large torque, small size, Gao control accuracy, Di-power, low noise, long life and low cost direction, but also to the Ju You control Gongneng the intelligent direction of Yi as all kinds of brushless motor common trend. MEMS processing technology will be in ultra-small micro-motor play an important role. Thin, intelligence and integration technologies will increasingly be used in micro-motor. AC variable speed drive will gradually replace the DC speed drive, including the use of full-controlled power electronic devices, LSI and microprocessors, vector control technology. Combination technology pieces, sliced Winding, processing non-cutting technology will promote the development of ultra-small micro-motor.

Printed circuit board: high-density, multi-functional, low-cost

High-density, fine conductor technology, narrow pitch, small diameter hole, surface mount, multi-functional, low cost printed circuit boards will remain (PCB) development direction. With the PCB from the installation package substrate into the substrate, and chip components and integrated, pin grid array (PGA), chip scale package (CSP) and multi-chip module (MCM) of the increasingly popular requests PCB encapsulated terminal miniaturization, high integration package, also requires the substrate to take on new features to meet the high-density assembly requirements. With optical technology, the future should be established to achieve the electrical PCB optical wiring, optical printed circuit boards, optical surface mount technology and modular optical technology unity. With high-speed systems, PCB impedance matching has become an important issue, according to the length of the signal speed and wiring are different requirements distortion down to 10% or 5%, or even 3%. To meet the narrow space between terminals and flip-chip CSP package development, the future goal of the Circuit miniaturization technology should be identified as: the minimum line width / spacing 25/25μm, wiring pitch 50μm, conductor thickness of 5μm the following.

Acoustic and crystal devices: to continue to thin, small-scale development

Audio / Video Speaker | Buzzer should continue to be low distortion, high sensitivity, large dynamic range, wide bandwidth and good transient response playback direction, TV speakers thin, small should continue to develop. Professional speaker should be high-power (200W or more), high efficiency (98dB ~ 100dB) and wide point of direction, and using new materials (such as aerospace titanium, laminated high-density composite cone, etc.), the new magnetic circuit design methods and CAD, CAM and CAT, computer-aided design, computer aided manufacturing and computer-aided testing technology.

Type quartz crystal element continues to be the mainstream product in the category, its size should be quick small, 5mm × 3.2mm is the mainstream product, and is to 4mm × 2.5mm, 3.2mm × 2.5mm, 2.5mm × 2mm, 2.5mm × 1.6mm further reduced, and the small, high stability, low phase noise crystal oscillator should be the direction of development.

Optical Cable: Small diameter, high transfer rate, high value-added

Communication Cable Category 5 cable is still the mainstream product, but the bandwidth up to 250MHz in six categories will increase the supply cable, Cat 7 cable will soon be listed, bandwidth up to 600MHz. Frequency up to 1200MHz 8-class cable is also included in development plans. But recently, Category 5 cable Category 6 cable also can not be completely replaced.

At present, the fiber optic cable products should be small diameter, high-fiber core number, high transfer rate, high value-added and other direction. Optical fiber technology direction: to further expand the transmission capacity of a single wavelength; using dispersion management technology to achieve long-distance optical fiber transmission; improve the nonlinear optical indicators to meet the DWDM technology.

Sensitive components and sensors: intelligent, integrated, digital

Intelligent: Smart sensor is intelligent automatic control system equipment | Instrument inevitable result, smart sensors more convenient and conducive to the bus system, sensor monitoring and control systems or networks.

Micro: the sensitive components and sensors using microfabrication techniques, ion implantation, thin film technologies, products tend to micro-miniaturization. First, small size, structure, geometry of sensitive components to reach micro and nano level; Second, light weight, a single sensor in grams.

Integrated composite of: sensor integration, one refers to the same property by multiple sensors configured in the same plane to form a sensor array; Second, a number of different functions on the same substrate micro-sensor configuration, the realization of multifunctional sensor; Third, the implementation of micro-sensors and micro-devices such as monolithic and hybrid integration.

Digital: Sensors and signal conditioning circuitry to realize the digital signal output, to facilitate and network interface.

Chip type: With the production of SMT technology, there has been a variety of surface mount components (SMC) to meet their technology needs, the main SMC, including chip-sensitive resistors, chip-sensitive capacitors, chip inductors and so sensitive.

Array: a sensor in the production of two or more sensitive to the same unit, in order to achieve lower test error or redundancy design purposes.

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Incremental and Radiation Interaction: electronic components, the two laws of technological innovation

Incremental linkage rule of law and electronic components Radiation Technology Innovation and Electronic Information Industry of the two laws.

Incremental law: Review of China and the world’s electronic information industry development history, one can Faxianzheyang a rule, electronic devices of every Yici innovative breakthrough technology, electronic components industry, Ben Shen Bu Jin to produce a cross development, but also promoted the use Xinxing Electronic Zhijie e-machine replacement parts, so that these industries directly related to the electronic machine to achieve a greater development, in order to stimulate the national economy and the world economy and prosperity.

For example, due to the innovative integrated circuit technology, the computer from the vacuum tube computers, computer transistors, integrated circuits, computers, large scale integrated circuit computer, VLSI computer, optical computer development to bio-intelligent computer; to tape recorders from the vacuum tube radio, phonograph , transistor radios, tape recorders, Walkman, MP3 developed to MP4; to make air conditioners from cooling air conditioners, hot and cold air conditioners, AC to DC inverter air conditioner inverter air conditioner development; to make washing machines washing machines from single-cylinder, double cylinder washing machine development to the automatic washing machine; to video from the tape recorder, VCD, Super VCD, DVD, progressive scan DVD recorder development to the disc. As the chip electronic component technology innovation, from analog phones to cell phones, digital phones to the development of third generation multimedia mobile phone.

As the electro-optic component technology innovation, so that light from incandescent, fluorescent, energy saving lamps to the development of LED (light emitting diode) lights. As the heating element technology innovation, from electronics to electric stove stove, oven, induction cooker, microwave oven development to light. As display technology innovations to television from black and white TV, color TV, flat rectangular TV, ultra-flat TV, flat screen TV, progressive scan TV, point by point scan TV, rear projection televisions, PDP (plasma) TV the development of the LCD (LCD) TV. In short, with the innovative technology of electronic components, electronic components directly using the new technology of new products like electronic tide gate, as wave after wave of surging from a Unit, not only by generation of people too late to use, and even the function also difficult for many people timely and comprehensive understanding, and thus greatly expand the market demand and promote economic growth.

Radiation interaction rules: By moving forward, people can also find such a rule, electronic components associated with new technology has enormous effect, a new technology of electronic components tend to open multiple new markets, new markets are also created many new jobs, indirect economic benefits generated is amazing.

For example, network components as technology innovation, new technology gave birth to the Internet network access, online shopping, online games, online advertising, e-commerce, search engine, comprehensive portal, personal portals, e-mail, electronic courseware, e-books, Internet telephony, Internet messaging, Internet chat, network television, movie, online education, network diagnosis, network security, online music, online banking, download hardware | tools, software downloads, site navigation, online recruitment, BBS, network news, network pictures, webcam, web albums, network information, network technology, network training, more than 50 new markets, and each new market needs for a variety of professional services group.

And with the continuous improvement of a new technology and social development, new markets will emerge, and the strong development momentum. Internet-based technologies such as blog, podcast, Wei-off it is.

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Electronic components in the information industry to gradually increase the proportion of

According to authoritative statistics and projections of international, 2007, the world of electronic information industry output value reached 4.65 trillion U.S. dollars, up 9.5%, 9.3% of total world GDP, ranking first in the industry; expected to reach 4.98 trillion U.S. dollars in 2008 , an increase of 7.1%, 9.7% of total world output, and further strengthen the leading position. 2007 World electronic components industry output value reached 446.4 billion U.S. dollars, up 11.1% of the world’s electronic information industry, 9.6% of GDP, the world’s total output of electronic components 1700180000000; projected 2008 GDP up to the World Electronic Components Industry 541.037 billion U.S. dollars, up 21.2% of the world’s electronic information industry, 10.5% of GDP, the world’s total output of electronic components up to 2,060,620,000,000. From this, the world’s electronic information industry has grown faster than world GDP growth, and in the world to gradually increase the proportion of GDP. Growth of the world’s electronic components industry growth rate higher than the world of electronic information industry, and electronic information industry in the world and gradually increase the proportion.

According to national authorities that in 2007 total output value of China’s electronic information industry was 5.6 trillion yuan, up 19.9% of the world’s electronic information industry output value of 17.2%, ranked after the United States, ranking second in the world, accounting for the total value of 22.7%, ranking first in the domestic industry; estimated 2008 gross output value of China’s electronic information industry reached 6.6 trillion yuan, up 18.5% of the world’s electronic information industry, 18.9% of GDP, is expected to overtake the U.S. in the world first, accounting for 24.2% of GDP, further strengthen the dominant position. 2007 total output value of China’s electronic components industry was 719.6 billion yuan, up 27.3% of the world’s electronic components industry, 23% of the total output value, accounting for the national electronic information industry, 12.9% of GDP, China’s output of electronic components for the 663 070 000 000, an increase of 15.4%, total world production of electronic components 39%, ranking first in the world; estimated 2008 gross output value of China’s electronic components industry up to 933.18 billion yuan, up 29.7%, representing the world’s electronic components industry, 24.6% of GDP , the national electronic information industry output value accounted for 14.1% of the total output of China’s electronic components up to 859.87 billion, up 29.7%, total world production of 42% of electronic components.

From this, growth rate of China’s electronic information industry was higher than the national GDP growth, and in the world, the proportion of electronic information industry and the country gradually increase the proportion of GDP. China’s electronic components industry, Electronic components industry growth rate higher than the world growth rate and growth rate of the national electronic information industry, and the electronic components industry in the world, and the proportion of the national electronic information industry in the proportion gradually increased.

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The Digital Divide:

Electronic Government or E-Government is the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) with the intention or purpose of upgrading and presenting government services to citizens, the public sector, private segment and the non-profit organizations globally. Digital divide is the terminology used to refer to the gap separating the social classes as concerns their knowledge and accessibility to modern technology especially as regards the computers and information technologies the internet inclusive. The digital divide draws a separation line between the wealthy and the poor, developed nations and developing nations and between the blacks and the whites.

The E-Government and the digital divide are essentially interrelated. With the increasing populations and the consequent need for government services by the public, information technology (IT) is an essential tool used to distribute and present services to people with ease, thereby boosting productivity and efficiency. However, the information technology in the government won’t have any significance if those who are intended to benefit from it have limited or no access to the service or are not able to utilize the service.

The first consideration for the implementation of E-Government is making all public offices computerized so as to enable them build a capacity for efficient service delivery and yield better governance catalyzed by technology. The second aspect to consider is the availability of citizen centric services by using the digital media. This may include establishing interactive government portals.

Currently, the nations with admirable e-governance schemes include New Zealand, Singapore and Canada. E-Government in the United States was particularly facilitated by the 1998 Government Paperwork Elimination Act as well as by President Clinton’s Memorandum on E-Government on December 17, 1999. The memorandum required that the most commonly used 500 forms by the citizens be made available online by December 2000. The memorandum further instructed agencies to formulate a secure E-Government infrastructure.

The world wide digital divide is not diminishing as quickly in spite of the complacency and misconceptions as inferred by researchers Fink, Kenny, Samuelson and Compaine. These researchers feel that the global digital divide is ending while other argues that the digital divide never existed. There are also those who believe that there is less importance to intervene on the matter, just as it is in the gap between the poor and the rich. Such perceptions are deceptive and influential to the interventionist strategy attitude. This indicates that less consideration is given to the digital divide making nations and their citizens miss the advantages of information and communication technology.

According to the A Nation Online: How Americas Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet (NTIA, 2002) article, the optimistic digital divide researchers in America are portrayed to argue that persons from poor backgrounds were making use of the Internet than those from wealthy families between 1998 and 2001. The article shows that Internet and computer literacy and application are growing much faster among the poor and marginal groups and the digital divide is narrowing rapidly. The article further argues that the digital divide is closing independently just as it is the case with automobiles.

According to World Bank researchers Kenny and Fink, there is likelihood for poor nations to adopt information technology much faster than developed nations. They argue that the growth rate of information technology in developing countries is much more likely to expand than in the developed nations. Any minor absolute increases in Internet use by the developing countries will be received as phenomenally huge growth rates, a suggestion that the digital divide will drastically reduce (James, 2008, p. 56-57).

To close the digital divide, developing countries’ governments should be actively involved in the efforts of bridging the gap (The Economist (2005). The digital divide in the United States has notably fallen. According to a Census Bureau survey, 37% of families in 1997 earning between $10,000 and $15,000 annually made use of computers. The number rose to 47% by 2001. 81% of families earning over $75,000 annually utilized computers in 1997 and this number rose to 88% by 2001 (Samuelson, 2002).

On the basis of historical analogy, Fink and Kenny argue that growth rates in computer usage are bound to remain higher among the developing nations. It is unclear whether these differences in growth rates between the developing and developed world will carry on in the future, equalize, or become the opposite as time goes (James, 2008). Fink and Kenny base their analogy on past growth rates of technology accessibility and diminishing accessibility gaps soon after establishment of new technology. It is not possible to rely on the Internet, television and telephone technologies to cover technology entirely. Fink and Kenny use simplistic predicting methodology rather than extrapolating between future rates of growth of Internet accessibility from two distinct technologies (James, 2008).

The accessibility to the Internet does not contribute to the digital divide. Instead, the digital divide is influenced by the utilization of the Internet and literacy necessary to make use of the Internet. Some technologies like mobile phones, telephone, and radio do not demand any skills in order to use them, while the Internet requires knowledge of computers, language skills and technical aptitude (James, 2008). Besides, a person has to be able to contextualize the information availed on the Internet and obtain information meaningful to their specific needs.

The Economist was authored somehow with an intention to challenge the beliefs of those who argue that the digital divide is swiftly closing. It is argued that the poor nations are on the dark side in that as the technology advances, the demand for advanced literacy and skills continues to rise, thereby widening the digital divide rather than closing it.

James (2008) in his article is against the notion that digital divide does not exist or is closing up. However, he lacks quantitative evidence and experimental evidence to reinforce his opposition. He deduces that A Nation Online: How Americas Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet (NTIA, 2002) article truth is not certain, but the claims generate complacency towards a digital divide thereby diverting focus from the matter. It would have been better for James to prove the incorrectness of the information rather than just alleging that the information may be true or false. He should have noted on the data’s reliance on information based on America rather than the world at large.

James (2008) gets support from Mason and Hacker (2003) in that information technology needs user competency different to radio and television and that only very few individuals in developing nations have these skills. Though the digital divide may be fading fast in some countries, it still does exist. Less has been done to determine the impacts of the introduction of Information Communication Technology in the third world and more practical research is necessary so as to realize the needs of developing nations’ inhabitants. James argues that a global perspective should be adopted when considering the digital divide and that looking beyond America would be the way out to help others close the digital divide.

The Understanding Digital Inequality article by Keil et al (2008) argues that the general behavioral models user approval for the socio economically underprivileged and socio economically privileged exist and relate to the digital disparity. In their view, the authors of this article feel the digital divide is the gap separating the advantaged and the disadvantaged in terms of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the utilization of information obtained from ICT. Being present in many countries, digital inequality differentiates the developed countries and the underdeveloped countries as concerns ICT.

Digital inequality is brought about by some socio economic factors such as the degree or the ability to obtain education and income. The government’s move to present access to technology and creation of conditions under which the technology will operate are crucial. To make the project successful, the government must realize the citizen’s user acceptance. Understanding Digital Inequality research is conducted to determine the significance of the citizen’s user acceptance of information technology initiatives offered by the government.

The methodology used comprises of survey tools for obtaining data from a particular community utilizing the government’s Internet project and then analyzing the results. The factors contributing to the difference in ICT application among the groups include the simplicity of use and the confidence, and they carry much weight on user acceptance. The theory of planned behavior used is applied in the analysis of the after-implementation effects of the ICT projects in the two groups.

Several factors in the model affecting the user acceptance either constructively or unconstructively include perceived behaviors, subjective norms and attitude. Attitude depends on the ulitirian factor which measures the significance of using ICT and the hedonic factor that measures the enjoyment derived from the use of ICT. Utilitarian results are linked with the socio benefited whereby ICT is utilized for the correct reasons, while the socio economically underprivileged employ ICT for entertainment or pleasure. This gap emerges because the disadvantaged use ICT for pleasure while the advantaged use ICT to obtain knowledge or for occupational reasons.

The distinction is a product of the social economically privileged persons being more learned and having ICT accessibility, giving them a better chance to use the technology. Friends spend much time together exchanging information and are thus more likely to influence an individual’s innovative behavior as opposed to the government.

The government can be influential by involving the community in discussions and training, and thus avail ICT to the community cheaply thereby benefiting the two groups. In so doing, the government will lower the digital inequality, and it may use methodical means to promote awareness and interest in the community. This will create a positive relationship to the subjective standards of the privileged and underprivileged in the society.

Confidence being another factor can affect both groups constructively and non-constructively. Confidence measures the execution of ICT projects and a person’s behavioral organization and affects ICT application in the society. Low confidence affects more the socio economically disadvantaged than the socio economically advantaged making the less-privileged experience difficulties accessing ICT, hence the digital divide. The ease or difficulty in using technology affects one’s belief and subsequent control on technology, though the socio economically disadvantaged are more affected by this. This is due to the fact that the socio economically privileged are more educated and thus able to cope with sophisticated features of the technology.

Technology is more theoretical than practical in most government initiatives. This renders availability, a barrier among the socio economically under privileged generating a digital inequality. A government ICT center is more likely to have limited computers raising the competition of which the less advantaged loses. A person’s innovative practice is influenced by the number of people in their network since the more educated and experienced people can influence the person positively thereby encouraging their innovation. The presence of computers at home gives more ICT benefits to the rich than the poor.

The methodology used here involves use of the planned behavioral model to examine factors that affect user acceptance. Several people in the community are supplied with Internet by the government on the basis of their social status and a survey is conducted and data analyzed indicating the difference in user acceptance between the groups. Ulitirian results, availability, attitude, ease of use and social composition show a heavy effect on the results, while the government has no effect.

Digital Inclusiveness by Lam and Lee (2006) is an article exploring methods of having efficacy in enabling older adults digital services accessibility. The study shows how countries such as the United States, Japan, U.K. and Singapore implement means in which their citizens access computers by providing training programs to the general public and introducing community wide computer facilities (Lam & Lee, 2006).

Training provisions on computer services and the introduction of computer centers in the community will guarantee computer access by everyone. Older adults comprise of a group of people who may have no interest in using computer services even when offered the community computers and trained on their use. The research focuses on studying the rate of willing use of computers by older adults. The study also helps to determine the perception of the old in creating a digitalized society (Constantine, 2009).

Questionnaires are used in this survey to make the targets answer the questions without fear of negative information. Lab experiments would provide the information on the understanding of computers by the old and their interest to learn about the computers (Edward, 2002). A margin of error is likely to occur however as is the case of sampled research (Constantine, 2009). Some interviewees may give insincere answers in order to please those asking in fear that they would otherwise miss the services. The lab method may appear to the target group as though they are being tested for brightness hence they may provide unreliable information for the future. Selection of the target group should have been based on education and occupation rather than just the age (Edward, 2002). The questionnaire survey should be aimed at obtaining specific information on the interest and usage of computers.

Wireless technologies are provided by municipalities to enhance access to the community including those who are physically challenged and those on the disadvantaged side of the digital divide. The municipal WiFi is provided at very low costs or free of charge to the society. This research was done to determine the level of accessibility and sensitivity of municipal wireless systems. The effectiveness of aims in eliminating the digital divide on the basis of disability is focused to determine how the policies toward the disabled fair and the legal insinuations of municipal WiFi systems. People with disabilities being already affected with discrepancies in income and education, extra marginalization of their communication and information accessibility brings about huge hindrances to their accessibility to important information needs, and communal participation (Baker et al, 2009).

Digital government and its effectiveness in public management reform by Asgarkhani (2005) highlights the usefulness of ICT education particularly on tertiary sector. The study looks at ways in which tertiary ICT educators develop learner’s skill and make them ready for job. The ICT skills acquired by the students are compared with what was required by the industry. The skills the students expect to learn are consistent with what they are taught. There are inconsistencies in their expectations in comparison to job market requirements. This study cannot be reliable since the results may not be true with all institutions and all ICT students.

According to Baker & Panagopoulos (2003), e-government is still complex in various perspectives including its design, practical implementation, awareness and effective design of responsive policies. With the rapidly rising technological and political implications, variations in the e-government procedures are evident. Their research overviews examples of various participation related e-government applications focusing on the relationship between state e-government projects and essential demographic, cultural or economic variables. Population of a state appears to be associated with the existence of e-government applications, very little of the anticipated relationships appear to function in incompatible manners based on the dataset used. Extra research basing on a larger dataset and more vigorous instrumentation is necessary.

Universal access to ICT would result to a world wide community of interaction, business, and learning leading to higher living standards and upgraded social welfare. The digital divide is however a threat to these results making most public policy makers discuss the most effective way to close the gap (Bélanger & Carter, 2009). Most of the research focuses on who has access to ICT and at times how the ICT is applied by those who access it. Bélanger and Carter examine the affected and the effects of the digital divide at three levels; the individual level, organizational level and national level.

Gascó (2005) in his article Exploring the e-government gap in South America addresses the underdevelopment of the e-governance in South America. He feels that the digital divide is prominent in Latin American nations and that implementation of efficient actions is required to improve the accessibility and utilization of ICT in communal services and e-governance within the South American region.

Hampton (2007) in his article Neighborhoods in the network society: the e-neighbors study examines internet as part of daily neighborhood interactions and the contexts in which the use of Internet assists in the creation of local social ties. Internet and community researches show that ICT presents new chances for social interaction, as well as increasing privacy by enclosing people in their closets. The study focuses on closing the gap between the parochial and electronic worlds. Experience in using the Internet increases the dimension of local social networks and email communication with local networks.

Helbig et al (2009) article Understanding the complexity of Electronic government: Implications from the digital divide literature has it that theoretically and empirically, e-government and the digital divide are interrelated. Studies concerning the e-government and the digital divide carry crucial parallels and potential interactions essential in comprehending e-government initiatives and policies in a better perspective subsequently for enhancing efficient digital schemes. Model and theory developments, understanding users and determinants of demand are some recommendations inferred from this research.

James, (2008) in his article Digital divide complacency: misconceptions and dangers discuss the global digital divide. The article confronts the perceptions that information technology can be easily equalized with the earlier dispersal of consumer durable goods, and that the divide can be varnished by redefining the matter, and that the global divide can be examined in absence of basic knowledge in innovation studies, technology and development, and the dismissal of process modernizations.

The challenges of redressing the digital divide by Kvasny & Keil (2006) evaluates the works by Atlanta and LaGrange cities in redressing the digital divide. They analyzed how the target populations and service providers responded to the two initiatives, how these responses worked to reproduce the digital divide, and the teaching for future digital divide programs. They found a reinforcement of the status quo. However, there lacked mechanisms for advancement.  They inferred that Atlanta and LaGrange programs could be classified as successful since they provided access and basic computer literacy to people.

In conclusion, the digital divide still exists in most countries, and for there to be an effective e-governance, more efforts in providing the resources and knowledge to the public as regards information technology must be put in place. Awareness on the use and the benefits of e-governance should be created in the community.

References:

Asgarkhani, M. (2005). Digital government and its effectiveness in public management reform:

A local government perspective.  Public Management Review, 7 (3) 465 – 487.

Baker, P., Hanson, J., &Myhill, W.N. (2009). The promise of municipal WiFi and failed policies

of inclusion: The disability divide. Information Polity 12, 47-59.

Baker, P. & Panagopoulos, C. (2003). Great expectations: The promise of digitalgovernmentin

the American states. American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 1-21.

Bélanger, F. & Carter, L. ( 2009). The impact of the digital divide on e-government use.

Communications of the ACM, 52(4), 132-135.

Dewan, S. & Riggins, F.J. (2005).The digital divide: current and future research directions

Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 6(12), 298-335.

Gascó, M. (2005). Exploring the e-government gap in South America. Intl Journal of Public

Administration, 28, 683–701.

Hammond, A. L. (2004). Digitally empowered development. Foreign Affairs, 80(2), 96-102.

Hampton, K. (2007). Neighborhoods in the network society: the e-neighbors study   Information,

Communication & Society, 10(5), 714–748.

Hawkins, E.T., & Hawkins, K.A. (2003). Bridging Latin America’s digital divide: government

policies and internet access. Journalism & Mass communication Quarterly, autumn, 646-

665.

Helbig, N. Gil-Garcí, J. R., Ferro, E. (2009, January). Understanding the complexity of

electronic government: Implications from the digital divide literature.   Government

Information Quarterly, 26(1), 89-97.

Hsieh, P., Rai, A., & Keil, M. (2008). Understanding digital inequality: comparing continued use

behavioral models of the socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged. MIS

Quarterly, 32(1), 97-126.

I-Ways (2006). Breaking barriers to e-government. Digest of Electronic Government Policy and

Regulation, 29, 205-217.

James, J. ( 2008). Digital divide complacency: misconceptions and dangers.  The Information

Society, 24, 54–61.

Lam, J., & Lee, M. (2006).  Digital inclusiveness: Longitudinal study of internet adoption by

older adults. Journal of Management Information System, 22(4), 177-206.

McNeal, R., Hale, K., & Dotterweich, L. (2008). Citizen-governmentinteraction and the

Internet: Expectations and accomplishments in contact, quality, and trust. Journal of

Information Technology & Politics, 2008, 5 (2), 213-229.

It is a significant fact that we are in the focal point of a deep-seated change in both technology and its application. Any institutions in our day expect to get more value from their investments in technology. In the “Post dearth era of calculation” the user-friendliness of dispensation power is not a check where cost of platform technology has become a minor factor in selecting among alternatives to build the business solution and as such the constraining factors are the managerial impact of reengineering the business process and the costs and time required for system development. Additionally, the need to re-educate personnel to the compulsory level of expertise can be an extremely expensive scheme. Open systems enable organizations to buy off-the-shelf solutions to business problems. Open systems standards set apart the design in which data is swapped, remote systems are accessed, and services are attracted. The receipt of open systems standards supports the creation of system architectures that can be built from technology components. These standards enable us, as follows:
• To build reusable class libraries to use in object-oriented design and development environments.
• To build functional products those interact with the same data which are bedded on object oriented as well as bedded on full integrity.
• To modify a correspondence at an individual desktop workstation to include data, addressing and graphics input from a word processor, a personal spreadsheet, a workgroup database, and an existing project host relevance to be propelled by electronic mail to someplace in the world.
It is worth mentioning that opposing to the claims of groups variety from the Open Software base to the user consortium Open User Recommended Solutions, open systems are not exclusively systems that conform to OSF UNIX specifications. The client/server model makes the enterprise available at the desk. It provides access to data that the previous architectures did not. Standards have been defined for client-server figuring. If these principles are understood and used, a society can rationally expect to buy solutions today that can grow with their business needs without the constant need to revise the solutions. Architectures based on open systems standards can be implemented throughout the world, as global systems become the norm for large organizations. While a supportable common platform on a global scale is far from standardized, it certainly is becoming much easier to accomplish. From the desktop, enterprise-wide applications are indistinguishable from workgroup and personal applications. Powerful enabling technologies with built-in conformance to open systems standards are evolving rapidly. Examples include object-oriented development, relational and object-oriented databases, multimedia, imaging, expert systems, geographic information systems, voice recognition and voice response, and text management. These technologies provide the opportunity to integrate their generic potential—with the particular necessities of a business—to create a cost-effective and personalized business solution. The client/server model provides the ideal platform with which to integrate these enabling technologies. Well-defined interface standards enable integration of products from several vendors to provide the right application solution. Enterprise systems are those that create and provide a shared information resource for the entire corporation. They do not imply centralized development and control, but they do treat information and technology as corporate resources. Enterprise network management requires all devices and applications in the enterprise computing environment to be visible and managed. This remains a major challenge as organizations move to distributed processing. Standards are defined and are being implemented within the client/server model. Client/server applications give greater viability to worker empowerment in a distributed organization than do today’s host-centered environments.
Prospects are accessible to society and populace who are equipped and capable to compete in the global market and there is no denying the fact that a competitive global economy will ensure obsolescence and obscurity to those who cannot or are unwilling to compete. All organizations must look for ways to demonstrate value. We are in conclusion bearing in mind that an enthusiasm has to rethink upon existing managerial structures and commerce in putting into practice. Organizations are aggressively downsizing even as they try to aggressively expand their revenue base. There is more willingness to continue improvement practices and programs to eliminate redundancy and increase effectiveness. Organizations are becoming market-driven while remaining true to their business vision. To be competitive in a global economy, organizations in developed economies must employ technology to gain the efficiencies necessary to offset their higher labor costs. Reengineering the business process to provide information and decision-making support at points of customer contact reduces the need for layers of decision-making management, improves responsiveness, and enhances customer service. Empowerment means that knowledge and responsibility are available to the employee at the point of customer contact. Empowerment will ensure that product and service problems and opportunities are identified and finalized. Client/server computing is the most effective source for the tools that empower employees with authority and responsibility. The following are some key drivers in organizational philosophy, policies, and practices. Competitiveness is forcing organizations to find new ways to manage their business, despite fewer personnel, more outsourcing, a market-driven orientation, and rapid product obsolescence. Technology can be the enabler of organizational nimbleness. To survive and prosper in a world where trade barriers are being eliminated, organizations must look for partnerships and processes that are not restrained by artificial borders. Quality, cost, product differentiation, and service are the new marketing priorities. Our information systems must support these priorities.
Contesting demands that information systems organizations justify their costs and it is evident that business are in the way to question the return on their existing investments and as such Centralized IS an operation in particular are under the microscope. Manufactured goods obsolescence has never been so vital a factor. Purchasers have more options and are more demanding. Technology must enable organizations to anticipate demand and meet it. Quality and flexibility require decisions to be made by individuals who are in touch with the customer. Many organizations are eliminating layers of middle management. Technology must provide the necessary information and support to this new structure. If a business is run from its distributed locations, the technology supporting these units must be as reliable as the existing central systems. Technology for remote management of the distributed technology is essential in order to use scarce expertise appropriately and to reduce costs. Each individual must have access to all information he or she has a “need and right” to access, without regard to where it is collected, determined, or located. We can use technology today to provide this “single-system image” of information at the desk, whatever the technology used to create it. Standardization has introduced many new suppliers and has dramatically reduced costs. Competition is driving innovation. Organizations must use architectures that take advantage of cost-effective offerings as they appear. Desktop workstations now provide the power and mainframe capacity that mainframes did only a few years ago. The challenge is to effectively use this power and capacity to create solutions to real business problems. Downsizing and empowerment require that the workgroup have access to information and work collectively. Decisions are being made in the workplace, not in the head office. Standards and new technologies enable workstation users to access information and systems without regard to location. Remote network management enables experts to provide support and central, system-like reliability to distributed systems. However, distributed systems are not transparent. Data access across a network often has unpredictable result sets; therefore, performance on existing networks is often inadequate, requiring a retooling of the existing network infrastructure to support the new data access environment.
Standards enable many new vendors to enter the market. With a common platform target, every product has the entire marketplace as a potential customer. With the high rate of introduction of products, it is certain that organizations will have to deal with multiple vendors. Only through a commitment to standards-based technology will the heterogeneous multiple vendor environment effectively service the buyer. Workstation power, workgroup empowerment, preservation of existing investments, remote network management, and market-driven business are the forces creating the need for client/server computing. The technology is here; what is missing is the expertise to effectively apply it. Organizational pressures to demonstrate value apply as much to the information systems functions as to any other element or operating unit of the business. This is a special challenge because most IS organizations have not previously experienced strong financial constraints, nor have they been measured for success using the same business justification “yardstick” as other value-creating units within the business enterprise. IS has not been under the microscope to prove that the role it plays truly adds value to the overall organization. In today’s world, organizations that cannot be seen to add value are either eliminated or outsourced. It has been found out on a survey that about 1000 companies, on average, spend 90 percent of IS dollars maintaining existing systems. Major business benefits, however, are available only from “new” systems. Dramatic reductions in the cost of technology help cost justify many systems. Organizations that adapt faster than their competitors demonstrate value and become the leaders in their marketplace. Products and services command a premium price when these organizations are “early to market.” As they become commodities, they attract only commodity prices. This is true of both commercial organizations wishing to be competitive in the market with their products and of service organizations wishing to demonstrate value within their department or government sector. “It only took God seven days to create the world because he didn’t have an existing environment to deal with.”3 Billions of dollars have been invested in corporate computing infrastructure and training. This investment must be fully used. Successful client/server solutions integrate with the existing applications and provide a gradual migration to the new platforms and business models.
To meet the goals of the 1990s, organizations are downsizing and eliminating middle-management positions. They want to transfer responsibility to empower the person closest to the customer to make decisions. Historically, computer systems have imposed the burden of data collection and maintenance on the front-line work force but have husbanded information in the head office to support decision making by middle management. Information must be made available to the data creators and maintainers by providing the connectivity and distributed management of enterprise databases and applications. The technology of client/server computing will support the movement of information processing to the direct creators and users of information. OLTP applications traditionally have been used in insurance, financial, government, and sales-related organizations. These applications are characterized by their need for highly reliable platforms that guarantee that transactions will be handled correctly, no data will be lost, and response times will be extremely low, and only authorized users will have access to an application. The IS industry understands OLTP in the traditional mainframe-centered platforms but not in the distributed client/server platforms. Organizations do (and will continue) to rely on technology to drive business. Much of the IS industry does not yet understand how to build mission-critical applications on client/server platforms. As organizations move to employee empowerment and workgroup computing, the desktop becomes the critical technology element running the business. Client/server applications and platforms must provide mainframe levels of reliability. Executive information systems provide a single-screen view of “how well we are doing” by comparing the mass of details contained in their current and historical enterprise databases with information obtained from outside sources about the economy and competition. As organizations enter into corporation with their customers and suppliers, the need to integrate with external systems becomes essential in order to capture the necessary information for an effective EIS. Organizations want to use the EIS data to make strategic decisions. The DSS should provide “what if” analyses to project the results of these decisions. Managers define expectations, and the local processing capability generates decision alerts when reality does not conform. This is the DSS of the client/server model. Information is now recognized as a corporate resource. To be truly effective, organizations must collect data at the source and distribute it, according to the requirements of “need and right to access,” throughout the organization. Workgroups will select the platforms that best meet their needs, and these platforms must integrate to support the enterprise solution. Systems built around open systems standards are essential for cost-effective integration. Los Angeles County issued a request for information stating simply that its goal was “to implement and operate a modern telecommunications network that creates a seamless utility for all County telecommunications applications from desktop to desktop. The United States government has initiated a project—the National Information Interchange that has the simple objective of “making the intellectual property of the United States available to all with a need and right to access.
“Computers will become a truly useful part of our society only when they are linked by an infrastructure like the highway system and the electric power grid, creating a new kind of free market for information services. The feature that makes the highway and electric power grids truly useful is their pervasiveness. Every home and office has ready access to these services; thus, they are used—without thought—in the normal course of living and working. This pervasive accessibility has emerged largely because of the adoption of standards for interconnection. If there were no standards for driving, imagine the confusion and danger. What if every wall plug were a different shape, or the power available on every plug were random? If using a service requires too much thought and attention, that service cannot become a default part of our living and working environment. “Imagine the United States without its highways. Our millions of cars, buses, and trucks driven in our own backyards and neighborhood parking lots, with occasional forays by the daring few along uncharted, unpredictable, and treacherous dirt roads, full of unspeakable terrors.”7 The parking lot analogy illustrated in Figure 1.1 represents the current information-processing environment in most organizations. It is easy and transparent to locate and use information on a local area network (LAN), but information located on another LAN is almost inaccessible. End-user access to enterprise data often is unavailable except for predefined information requests. Although computers—from mainframes to PCs—are numerous, powerful, flexible, and widely used, they are still used in relative isolation. When they communicate, they usually do so ineffectively, through arcane and arbitrary procedures. Information comes with many faces. As shown in Figure 1.2, it can take the form of text, drawings, music, speech, photographs, stock prices, invoices, software, live video, and many other entities. Yet once information is computerized, it becomes a deceptively uniform sequence of ones and zeros. The underlying infrastructure must be flexible in the way it transports these ones and zeros. To be truly effective besides routing these binaries to their destinations the infrastructure must be able to carry binaries with varying degrees of speed, accuracy, and security to accommodate different computer capabilities and needs.
Because computers are manufactured and sold by vendors with differing views on the most effective technology, they do not share common implementation concepts. Transporting ones and zeros around, however flexibly, isn’t enough. Computers based on different technologies cannot comprehend each other’s ones and zeros any more than people comprehend foreign languages. We therefore need to endow our IS organizations with a set of widely understood common information interchange conventions. Moreover, these conventions must be based on concepts that make life easier for humans, rather than for computer servants. Finally, the truly useful infrastructure must be equipped with “common servers”—computers that provide a few basic information services of wide interest, such as computerized white and yellow pages.

Technological innovation proceeds at a pace that challenges the human mind to understand how to take advantage of its capabilities. Electronic information management, technological innovation in the personal computer, high-speed electronic communication, and digital encoding of information provide new opportunities for enhanced services at lower cost. Personal computers can provide services directly to people who have minimal computer experience. They provide low-cost, high-performance computing engines at the site that the individual lives, works, or accesses the service—regardless of where the information is physically stored. Standards for user interface, data access, and intercrosses communications have been defined for the personal computer and are being adopted by a majority of the vendor community. There is no reason to accept solutions that do not conform to the accepted standards. Most large organizations today use a heterogeneous collection of hardware, software, and connectivity technologies. There is considerable momentum toward increased use of technology from multiple vendors. This trend leads to an increasingly heterogeneous environment for users and developers of computer systems. Users are interested in the business functionality, not the technology. Developers rarely are interested in more than a subset of the technology. The concept of the single-system image says that you can build systems that provide transparency of the technology platform to the user and—at the largest extent possible—to the developer. Developers will need sufficient knowledge of the syntax used to solve the business problem, but will need little or no knowledge of the underlying technology infrastructure. Hardware platforms, operating systems, database engines, and communications protocols are necessary technological components of any computer solution, but they should provide services—not create obstacles to getting the job done. Services should be masked; that is, they should be provided in a natural manner without requiring the user to make unnatural gyrations to invoke them. Only by masking these services and by using standard interfaces can we hope to develop systems quickly and economically. At the same time, masking (known as encapsulation in object-oriented programming) and standard interfaces preserve the ability to change the underlying technology without affecting the application. There is value in restricting imagination when you build system architectures. Systems development is not an art; it is an engineering discipline that can be learned and used. Systems can be built on the foundations established by previous projects.
Within the single-system image environment, a business system user is totally unaware of where data is stored, how the client and server processors work, and what networking is involved in gaining connectivity. Every application that the user accesses provides a common “look and feel.” Help is provided in the same way by every application. Errors are presented and resolved in the same way by every application. Access is provided through a standard security procedure for every application. Each user has access to all services for which he or she has a need and a right to access.
• The security layer is invisible to the authorized and impenetrable to the unauthorized.
• Navigation from function to function and application to application is provided in the same way in every system. New applications can be added with minimal training, because the standard functions work in the same way, and only the new business functions need be learned. It is not necessary to go to “boot camp for basic training” prior to using each new application. Basic training is a one-time effort because the basics do not change.
The complexity of a heterogeneous computing platform will result in many interfaces at both the logical and physical level. Organizations evolve from one platform to another as the industry changes, as new technologies evolve that are more cost effective, and as acquisitions and mergers introduce other installed platforms. All these advances must be accommodated. There is complexity and risk when attempting to interoperate among technologies from many vendors. It is necessary to engage in “proof of concept” testing to distinguish the marketing version of products and architectures from the delivered version. Many organizations use a test lab concept called technology competency centers to do this “proof of concept.” The TCC concept provides a local, small-scale model of all the technologies involved in a potential single-system, interoperable image. Installing a proposed solution using a TCC is a low-cost means of ensuring that the solution is viable. These labs enable rapid installation of the proposed solution into a proven environment. They eliminate the need to set up from scratch all the components that are necessary to support the unique part of a new application. Organizations—Merrill Lynch, Health Canada, SHL System house, BSG Corporation, Microsoft, and many others—use such labs to do sanity checks on new technologies. The rapid changes in technology capability dictate that such a resource be available to validate new products. The single-system image is best implemented through the client/server model.. Our experience confirms that client/server computing can provide the enterprise to the desktop. Because the desktop computer is the user’s view into the enterprise, there is no better way to guarantee a single image than to start at the desktop. Unfortunately, it often seems as if the number of definitions of client/server computing depends on how many organizations you survey, whether they’re hardware and software vendors, integrators, or IS groups. Each has a vested interest in a definition that makes its particular product or service an indispensable component. Throughout this book, the following definitions will be used consistently:
• Client: A client is a single-user workstation that provides presentation services and the appropriate computing, connectivity, and database services and interfaces relevant to the business need.
• Server: A server is one or more multi-user processors with shared memory providing computing, connectivity, and database services and interfaces relevant to the business need.
Client/server computing is an environment that satisfies the business need by appropriately allocating the application processing between the client and the server processors. The client requests services from the server; the server processes the request and returns the result to the client. The communications mechanism is a message passing interposes communication (IPC) that enables (but does not require) distributed placement of the client and server processes. Client/server is a software model of computing, not a hardware definition. This definition makes client/server a rather generic model and fits what is known in the industry as “cooperative processing” or “peer-to-peer.” Because the client/server environment is typically heterogeneous, the hardware platform and operating system of the client and server are not usually the same. In such cases, the communications mechanism may be further extended through a well-defined set of standard application program interfaces (APIs) and remote procedure calls. The modern diagram representing the client/server model was probably first popularized by Sybase. Figure 1.4 illustrates the single-system image vision. A client-user relies on the desktop workstation for all computing needs. Whether the application runs totally on the desktop or uses services provided by one or more servers—be they powerful PCs or mainframes—is irrelevant. Effective client/server computing will be fundamentally platform-independent. The user of an application wants the business functionality it provides; the computing platform provides access to this business functionality. There is no benefit, yet considerable risk, in exposing this platform to its user. Changes in platform and underlying technology should be transparent to the user. Training costs, business processing delays and errors, staff frustration, and staff turnover result from the confusion generated by changes in environments where the user is sensitive to the technology platform.

It is easily demonstrated that systems built with transparency to the technology, for all users, offer the highest probability of solid ongoing return for the technology investment. It is equally demonstrable that if developers become aware of the target platform, development will be bound to that platform. Developers will use special features, tricks, and syntax found only in the specific development platform. Tools, which isolate developers from the specifics of any single platform, assist developers in writing transparent, portable applications. These tools must be available for each of the three essential components in any application: data access, processing, and interfaces. Data access includes the graphical user interface (GUI) and stored data access. Processing includes the business logic. Interfaces link services with other applications. This simple model, reflected in Figure 1.5, should be kept in mind when following the evolution to client/server computing. The use of technology layers provides this application development isolation. These layers isolate the characteristics of the technology at each level from the layer above and below. This layering is fundamental to the development of applications in the client/server model. The rapid rate of change in these technologies and the lack of experience with the “best” solutions implies that we must isolate specific technologies from each other. This book will continue to emphasize and expand on the concept of a systems development environment (SDE) as a way to achieve this isolation. Developer tools are by far the most visible. Most developers need to know only the syntax of these tools to express the business problem in a format acceptable to the technology platform. With the increasing involvement of minicomputer professionals, as technology users and application assemblers, technology isolation is even more important. Very few—perhaps none—of an organization’s application development staff needs to be aware of the hardware, system software, specific database engines, specific communications products, or specific presentation services products. These are invoked through the APIs message passing, and generated by tools or by a few technical specialists. As you will see in Chapter 6, the development of an application architecture supported by a technical architecture and systems development environment is the key to achieving this platform independence and ultimately to developing successful client/server applications.
As organizations increase the use of personal productivity tools, workstations become widely installed. The need to protect desktop real estate requires that host terminal capabilities be provided by the single workstation. It soon becomes evident that the power of the workstation is not being tapped and application processing migrates to the desktop. Once most users are connected from their workstation desktop to the applications and data at the host mainframe or minicomputer, there is significant cost benefit in offloading processing to these powerful workstations. The first applications tend to be data capture and edit. These simplify—but still use—the transaction expected by an already existing host application. If the workstation is to become truly integrated with the application, reengineering of the business process will be necessary. Accounting functions and many customer service applications are easily offloaded in this manner. Thus, workgroup and departmental processing is done at the LAN level, with host involvement for enterprise-wide data and enforcement of interdepartmental business rules. In this “dumb” terminal (IBM uses the euphemism nonprogrammable to describe its 327x devices) emulation environment, all application logic resides in the minicomputer, mainframe, or workstation. Clearly a $5000 or less desktop workstation is capable of much more than the character display provided by a $500 terminal. In the client/server model, the low-cost processing power of the workstation will replace host processing, and the application logic will be divided appropriately among the platforms. As previously noted, this distribution of function and data is transparent to the user and application developer.
The mainframe-centric model uses the presentation capabilities of the workstation to front-end existing applications. The character mode interface is remapped by products such as Easel and Mozart. The same data is displayed or entered through the use of pull-down lists, scrollable fields, check boxes, and buttons; the user interface is easy to use, and information is presented more clearly. In this mainframe-centric model, mainframe applications continue to run unmodified, because the existing terminal data stream is processed by the workstation-based communications API. This protects the investment in existing applications while improving performance and reducing costs. Character mode applications, usually driven from a block mode screen, attempt to display as much data as possible in order to reduce the number of transmissions required to complete a function. Dumb terminals impose limitations on the user interface including fixed length fields, fixed length lists, crowded screens, single or limited character fonts, limited or no graphics icons, and limited windowing for multiple application display. In addition, the fixed layout of the screen makes it difficult to support the display of conditionally derived information. In contrast, the workstation GUI provides facilities to build the screen dynamically. This enables screens to be built with a variable format based conditionally on the data values of specific fields. Variable length fields can be scrollable, and lists of fields can have a scrollable number of rows. This enables a much larger virtual screen to be used with no additional data communicated between the client workstation and server. Windowing can be used to pull up additional information such as help text, valid value lists, and error messages without losing the original screen contents. The more robust GUI facilities of the workstation enable the user to navigate easily around the screen. Additional information can be encapsulated by varying the display’s colors, fonts, graphics icons, scrollable lists, pull-down lists, and option boxes. Option lists can be provided to enable users to quickly select input values. Help can be provided, based on the context and the cursor location, using the same pull-down list facilities. Although it is a limited use of client/server computing capability, a GUI front end to an existing application is frequently the first client/server-like application implemented by organizations familiar with the host mainframe and dumb-terminal approach. The GUI preserves the existing investment while providing the benefits of ease of use associated with a GUI. It is possible to provide dramatic and functionally rich changes to the user interface without host application change.
The next logical step is the provision of some edit and processing logic executing at the desktop workstation. This additional logic can be added without requiring changes in the host application and may reduce the host transaction rate by sending up only valid transactions. With minimal changes to the host application, network traffic can be reduced and performance can be improved by using the workstation’s processing power to encode the data stream into a compressed form. A more interactive user interface can be provided with built-in, context-sensitive help, and extensive prompting and user interfaces that are sensitive to the users’ level of expertise. These options can be added through the use of workstation processing power. These capabilities enable users to operate an existing system with less intensive training and may even provide the opportunity for public access to the applications. Electronic data interchange (EDI) is an example of this front-end processing. EDI enables organizations to communicate electronically with their suppliers or customers. Frequently, these systems provide the workstation front end to deal with the EDI link but continue to work with the existing back-end host system applications. Messages are reformatted and responses are handled by the EDI client, but application processing is done by the existing application server. Productivity may be enhanced significantly by capturing information at the source and making it available to all authorized users. Typically, if users employ a multipart form for data capture, the form data is entered into multiple systems. Capturing this information once to a server in a client/server application, and reusing the data for several client applications can reduce errors, lower data entry costs, and speed up the availability of this information.
There is no delay while the forms are passed around the organization. This is usually a better technique than forms imaging technology in which the forms are created and distributed internally in an organization. The use of workflow-management technology and techniques, in conjunction with imaging technology, is an effective way of handling this process when forms are filled out by a person who is physically remote from the organization. Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) technology can be an extremely effective way to automate the capture of data from a form, without the need to key. Current experience with this technique shows accuracy rates greater than 99.5 percent for typed forms and greater than 98.5 percent for handwritten forms.

Rightsizing and rationalizing are strategies used with the client/server model to take advantage of the lower cost of workstation technology. Rightsizing and upsizing may involve the addition of more diverse or more powerful computing resources to an enterprise computing environment. The benefits of rightsizing are reduction in cost and/or increased functionality, performance, and flexibility in the applications of the enterprise. Significant cost savings usually are obtained from a resulting reduction in employee, hardware, software, and maintenance expenses. Additional savings typically accrue from the improved effectiveness of the user community using client/server technology. Eliminating middle layers of management implies empowerment to the first level of management with the decision-making authority for the whole job. Information provided at the desktop by networked PCs and workstations integrated with existing host (such as mainframe and minicomputer) applications is necessary to facilitate this empowerment. These desktop-host integrated systems house the information required to make decisions quickly. To be effective, the desktop workstation must provide access to this information as part of the normal business practice. Architects and developers must work closely with business decision makers to ensure that new applications and systems are designed to be integrated with effective business processes. Much of the cause of poor return on technology investment is attributable to a lack of understanding by the designers of the day-to-day business impact of their solutions. Downsizing information systems is more than an attempt to use cheaper workstation technologies to replace existing mainframes and minicomputers in use. Although some benefit is obtained by this approach, greater benefit is obtained by reengineering the business processes to really use the capabilities of the desktop environment. Systems solutions are effective only when they are seen by the actual user to add value to the business process. Client/server technology implemented on low-cost standard hardware will drive downsizing. Client/server computing makes the desktop the users’ enterprise. As we move from the machine-centered era of computing into the workgroup era, the desktop workstation is empowering the business user to regain ownership of his or her information resource. Client/server computing combines the best of the old with the new—the reliable multi-user access to shared data and resources with the intuitive, powerful desktop workstation.
In view of the above it is evident that object-oriented development concepts are embodied in the use of an SDE created for an organization from an architecturally selected set of tools. The SDE provides more effective development and maintenance than companies have experienced with traditional host-based approaches. Client/server computing is open computing. Mix and match is the rule. Development tools and development environments must be created with both openness and standards in mind. Mainframe applications rarely can be downsized—without modifications—to a workstation environment. Modifications can be minor, wherein tools are used to port existing mainframe source code—or major, wherein the applications are rewritten using completely new tools. In porting, native COBOL compilers, functional file systems, and emulators for DB2, IMS DB/DC, and CICS are available for workstations. In rewriting, there is a broad array of tools ranging from PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, and Access, to larger scale tools such as Forte and Dynasty. Micro Focus has added an Object Oriented (OO) option to its workbench to facilitate the creation of reusable components. The OO option supports integration with applications developed under Smalltalk/V PM. IBM’s CICS for OS/2, OS400, RS6000, and HP/UX products enable developers to directly port applications using standard CICS call interfaces from the mainframe to the workstation. These applications can then run under OS/2, AIX, OS400, HP/UX, or MVS/VSE without modification. This promises to enable developers to create applications for execution in the CICS MVS environment and later to port them to these other environments without modification. Conversely, applications can be designed and built for such environments and subsequently ported to MVS (if this is a logical move). Organizations envisioning such a migration should ensure that their SDE incorporates standards that are consistent for all of these platforms.
These harvests, pooled with the economical processing power available on the workstation, make the workstation Local Area Network an ideal expansion and maintenance environment for existing host processors. When an organization views mainframe or minicomputer resources as real dollars, developers can usually justify offloading the development in only three to six months. Explorers can be effective only when a proper systems development environment is put in place and provided with a suite of tools offering the host capabilities plus enhanced connectivity. Workstation operating systems are still more primitive than the existing host server MVS, VMS, or UNIX operating systems. Therefore, appropriate standards and procedures must be put in place to coordinate shared development. The workstation environment will change. Only projects built with common standards and procedures will be resilient enough to remain viable in the new environment.
The major reserves come up to from new projects that can create apposite values at the initiate and do all development using the workstation LAN environment. It is possible to retrofit standards to an existing environment and establish a workstation with a LAN-based maintenance environment. The benefits are less because retrofitting the standards creates some costs. However, these costs are justified when the application is scheduled to undergo significant maintenance or if the application is very critical and there is a desire to reduce the error rate created by changes. The discipline associated with the movement toward client/server-based development, and the transfer of code between the host and client/server will almost certainly result in better testing and fewer errors. The testing facilities and usability of the workstation will make the developer and tester more effective and therefore more accurate. Business processes use database, communications, and application services. In an ideal world, we pick the best servers available to provide these services, thereby enabling our organizations to enjoy the maximum benefit that current technology provides. Real-world developers’ make compromises around the existing technology, existing application products, training investments, product support, and a myriad other factors. Key to the success of full client/server applications is selecting an appropriate application and technical architecture for the organization. Once the technical architecture is defined, the tools are known.
The ultimate pace is to accomplish an SDE to categorize the principles desirable to use the tools in actual fact. This SDE is the collection of hardware, software, standards, standard procedures, interfaces, and training built up to support the organization’s particular needs. Many construction projects fail because their developers assume that a person with a toolbox full of carpenter’s tools is a capable builder.

In view of the above, it is evident that in order to be a successful planner, a person needs  be trained to build according to standards. The creation of standards to define interfaces to the sewerage, water, electrical utilities, road, school, and community systems is essential for successful, cost-effective building. We do not expect a carpenter to design such interfaces individually for every building. Rather, pragmatism discourages imagination in this regard. By reusing the models previously built to accomplish integration, we all benefit from cost and risk reduction. Suffice it to say that the preamble of a whole new generation of Object oriented Technology based on tools for client/server development demands that proper standards can be put in place to support shared development, reusable code, interfaces to existing systems, security, error handling, and an organizational standard “gaze and think.” As with any new technology, there will be changes. Developers can build application systems closely tied to today’s technology or use an SDE and promote applications that can progress along with the expertise podium.

1. Synopsis Of The Article.
Information Technology solutions have paved a way to a new world of internet, business networking and e-banking, budding as a solution to reduce costs, change the sophisticated economic affairs to more easier, speedy, efficient, and time saving method of transactions. Internet has emerged as a blessing for the present pace of life but at the same time also resulted in various threats to the consumers and other institutions for which it’s proved to be most beneficial. Various criminals like hackers, crackers have been able to pave their way to interfere with the internet accounts through various techniques like hacking the Domain Name Server (DNS), Internet Provider’s (IP) address, spoofing, phishing, internet phishing etc. and have been successful in gaining “unauthorised access” to the user’s computer system and stolen useful data to gain huge profits from customer’s accounts.

Intentional use of information technology by cyber terrorists for producing destructive and harmful effects to tangible and intangible property of others is called “cyber crime”. Cyber crime is clearly an international problem with no national boundaries. Hacking attacks can be launched from any corner of the world without any fear of being traced or prosecuted easily. Cyber terrorist can collapse the economic structure of a country from a place where that country might not have any arrangements like “extradition treaty” to deal with that criminal. The only safeguard would be better technology to combat such technology already evolved and known to the Hackers. But that still has threat of being taken over by the intellect computer criminals.

This paper contributes an understanding of the effects of negative use of Information technology, and how far the present law in India is successful in dealing with the issue, and what way is the legal structure lagging to curb the crime. Possible changes needed in the system and the ways to combat cyber terrorism having safe and trustworthy transactions.

Though there are many techniques evolved to curb the criminal activities by cyber terrorists but still the problem persists in legal structure and has failed to produce a deterring effect on the criminals. If the suggestions are undertaken in light of conclusion there can be a better co-ordination among various national and international agencies to make the system more efficient, and Information Technology Act 2000 more secured and trustworthy. It can still be held good for the objects it had existed to provide the benefits to the society. This paper is contributive of the fact that the till the crime rate is not curbed technology cannot produce adequate benefits for which it’s been created.

2. What Is Cyber Crime?
Cyber terrorists usually use the computer as a tool, target, or both for their unlawful act either to gain information which can result in heavy loss/damage to the owner of that intangible sensitive information. Internet is one of the means by which the offenders can gain such price sensitive information of companies, firms, individuals, banks, intellectual property crimes (such as stealing new product plans, its description, market programme plans, list of customers etc.), selling illegal articles, pornography etc. this is done through many methods such as phishing, spoofing, pharming, internet phising, wire transfer etc. and use it to their own advantage without the consent of the individual.

Many banks, financial institutions, investment houses, brokering firms etc. are being victimised and threatened by the cyber terrorists to pay extortion money to keep their sensitive information intact to avoid huge damages. And it’s been reported that many institutions in US, Britain and Europe have secretly paid them to prevent huge meltdown or collapse of confidence among their consumers.

2.2. Emergence Of Information Technology Act, 2000.
In India, the Information Technology Act 2000 was enacted after the United Nation General Assembly Resolution A/RES/51/162, dated the 30th January, 1997 by adopting the Model Law on Electronic Commerce adopted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. This was the first step towards the Law relating to e-commerce at international level to regulate an alternative form of commerce and to give legal status in the area of e-commerce. It was enacted taking into consideration UNICITRAL model of Law on e- commerce 1996.

3. Some Noteworthy Provisions Under The Information Technology Act, 2000.

Sec.43

Damage to Computer system etc.

Compensation for Rupees 1crore.

Sec.66

Hacking (with intent or knowledge)

Fine of 2 lakh rupees, and imprisonment for 3 years.

Sec.67

Publication of obscene material in e-form

Fine of 1 lakh rupees, and imprisonment of 5years, and double conviction on second offence

Sec.68

Not complying with directions of controller

Fine upto 2 lakh and imprisonment of 3 years.

Sec.70

attempting or securing access to computer

Imprisonment upto 10 years.

Sec.72

For breaking confidentiality of the information of computer

Fine upto 1 lakh and imprisonment upto 2 years

Sec.73

Publishing false digital signatures, false in certain particulars

Fine of 1 lakh, or imprisonment of 2 years or both.

Sec.74

Publication of Digital Signatures for fraudulent purpose.

Imprisonment for the term of 2 years and fine for 1 lakh rupees.

4. Types Of Attacks By Hackers.
Hacker is computer expert who uses his knowledge to gain unauthorized access to the computer network. He’s not any person who intends to break through the system but also includes one who has no intent to damage the system but intends to learn more by using one’s computer. Information Technology Act 2000 doesn’t make hacking per se an offence but looks into factor of mens rea. Crackers on other hand use the information cause disruption to the network for personal and political motives. Hacking by an insider or an employee is quite prominent in present date. Section 66 (b) of the Information Technology Act 2000, provides punishment of imprisonment for the term of 3 years and fine which may extent to two lakhs rupees, or with both

Banks and other financial institutions are threatened by the terrorist groups to use their sensitive information resulting in heavy loss and in turn ask for ransom amount from them. There are various methods used by hackers to gain unauthorised access to the computers apart from use of viruses like Trojans and worms etc.

Therefore if anyone secures access to any computer without the permission of the owner shall be liable to pay damages of one crore rupees under Information Technology Act, 2000. Computer system here means a device including input and output support devices and systems which are capable of performing logical, arithmetical, data storage and retrieval, communication control and other functions but excludes calculators. Unauthorised access under Section 43 of the Information Technology Act 2000 is punishable regardless of the intention or purpose for which unauthorised access to the computer system was made. Owner needn’t prove the facto of loss, but the fact of it been used without his authorisation. Case of United States v. Rice would be important in this regard where defendant on the request of his friend (who was been under investigation by IRS officer) tried to find the status of his friend’s case by using officer’s computer without his consent. Though it didn’t cause any damage/loss to the plaintiff (officer) but was convicted by the Jury for accessing the computer system of a Government without his authority and his conviction was later on confirmed. Even if one provides any assistance to the other to gain any unauthorised access to the computer he shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation of Rupees 1 crore.

Does turning on the computer leads to unauthorized access? The mens rea under section 1 of the Computer misuse Act, 1990 comprises of two elements there must be an intent to secure an access to any programme or data held in any computer, and the person must know that he intends to secure an unauthorized access. e.g. When defendants went to his former employee to purchase certain equipments and the sales person was not looking he was alleged to have keyed in certain commands to the computerized till granting himself substantial discount. Though section 1 (1) (a) requires “that second computer must be involved” but the judiciary in the case of R v. Sean Cropp, believed that the Parliament would have intended to restrict the offence even if single computer system was involved.

A) Computer Viruses: Viruses are used by Hackers to infect the user’s computer and damage data saved on the computer by use of “payload” in viruses which carries damaging code. Person would be liable under I.T Act only when the consent of the owner is not taken before inserting virus in his system. The contradiction here is that though certain viruses causes temporary interruption by showing messages on the screen of the user but still it’s not punishable under Information Technology Act 2000 as it doesn’t cause tangible damage. But, it must be made punishable as it would fall under the ambit of ‘unauthorised access’ though doesn’t cause any damage. Harmless viruses would also fall under the expression used in the provision “to unsurp the normal operation of the computer, system or network”. This ambiguity needs reconsideration.

B) Phishing: By using e-mail messages which completely resembles the original mail messages of customers, hackers can ask for verification of certain information, like account numbers or passwords etc. here customer might not have knowledge that the e-mail messages are deceiving and would fail to identify the originality of the messages, this results in huge financial loss when the hackers use that information for fraudulent acts like withdrawing money from customers account without him having knowledge of it

C) Spoofing: This is carried on by use of deceiving Websites or e-mails. These sources mimic the original websites so well by use of logos, names, graphics and even the code of real bank’s site.

D) Phone Phishing: Is done by use of in-voice messages by the hackers where the customers are asked to reveal their account identification, and passwords to file a complaint for any problems regarding their accounts with banks etc.

E) Internet Pharming: Hacker here aims at redirecting the website used by the customer to another bogus website by hijacking the victim’s DNS server (they are computers responsible for resolving internet names into real addresses – “signposts of internet), and changing his I.P address to fake website by manipulating DNS server. This redirects user’s original website to a false misleading website to gain unauthorised information.

F) Risk Posed On Banks And Other Institutions: Wire transfer is the way of transferring money from one account another or transferring cash at cash office. This is most convenient way of transfer of cash by customers and money laundering by cyber terrorists. There are many guidelines issued by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in this regard, one of which is KYC (Know Your Customer) norms of 2002. Main objective of which is to:
1) Ensure appropriate customer identification, and
2) Monitor the transaction of suspicious nature and report it to appropriate authority every day bases.

G) Publishing Pornographic Material In Electronic Form: Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 in parallel to Section 292 of Indian Penal Code, 1860 makes publication and transmission of any material in electronic that’s lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest a crime, and punishable with imprisonment which may extend to 5 years and fine of 1 lakh rupees and subsequent offence with an imprisonment extending to 10 years and fine of 2 lakhs.

Various tests were laid down gradually in course of time to determine the actual crime in case of obscene material published in electronic form on net. Hicklin test was adopted in America in the case of Regina v. Hicklin wherein it was held that “if the material has tendency is to deprive and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall”. In Indian scenario the case of Ranjeet D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra the Supreme Court admitted that Indian Penal Code doesn’t define obscenity though it provides punishment for publication of obscene matter. There’s very thin line existing between a material which could be called obscene and the one which is artistic. Court even stressed on need to maintain balance between fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression and public decency and morality. If matter is likely to deprave and corrupt those minds which are open to influence to whim the material is likely to fall. Where both obscenity and artistic matter is so mixed up that obscenity falls into shadow as its insignificant then obscenity may be overlooked.

In the case of Miller v. California it was held that local community standard must be applied at the time of determination of the offence. As it can traverse in many jurisdictions and can be accessed in any part of the globe. So wherever the material can be accessed the community standards of that country would be applicable to determine the offence of publication of obscene material posted in electronic form. Though knowledge of obscenity under Information Technology Act 2000 and Indian Penal Code may be taken as mitigating factor but doesn’t take the case out of the provision.

Section 72 of Information Technology Act, 2000 provides punishment for an unauthorised access or, disclosure of that information to third person punishable with an imprisonment upto 2 years or fine which may extend to 1 lakh rupees or with both. English courts have also dealt with an issue as to what activities would constitute crime under existing legislation, in the case of R. v. Fellows and Arnold it was held that the legislation before the 1994 amendment would also enable computer data to be considered a ‘copy of an indecent photograph’ and making images available for downloading from the website would constitute material being ‘distributed or shown’. Statute is wide enough to deal with the use of computer technology.

(H) Investment Newsletter:  We usually get newsletter providing us free information recommending that investment in which field would be profitable. These may sometimes be a fraud and may cause us huge loss if relied upon. False information can be spread by this method about any company and can cause huge inconvenience or loss through junk mails online.

(I) Credit Card Fraud: Huge loss may cause to the victim due to this kind of fraud. This is done by publishing false digital signatures. Most of the people lose credit cards on the way of delivery to the recipient or its damaged or defective, misrepresented etc.

4. Measures To Curb The Crime.
Though by passage of time and improvement in technology to provide easier and user friendly methods to the consumer for make up their daily activities, it has lead to harsh world of security threats at the same time by agencies like hackers, crackers etc. various Information technology methods have been introduced to curb such destructive activities to achieve the main objects of the technology to provide some sense of security to the users. Few basic prominent measures used to curb cyber crimes are as follows:

A) Encryption: This is considered as an important tool for protecting data in transit. Plain text (readable) can be converted to cipher text (coded language) by this method and the recipient of the data can decrypt it by converting it into plain text again by using private key. This way except for the recipient whose possessor of private key to decrypt the data, no one can gain access to the sensitive information.
Not only the information in transit but also the information stored on computer can be protected by using Conventional cryptography method. Usual problem lies during the distribution of keys as anyone if overhears it or intercept it can make the whole object of encryption to standstill. Public key encryptograpy was one solution to this where the public key could be known to the whole world but the private key was only known to receiver, its very difficult to derive private key from public key.

B) Syncronised Passwords: These passwords are schemes used to change the password at user’s and host token. The password on synchronised card changes every 30-60 seconds which only makes it valid for one time log-on session. Other useful methods introduced are signature, voice, fingerprint identification or retinal and biometric recognition etc. to impute passwords and pass phrases

C) Firewalls: It creates wall between the system and possible intruders to protect the classified documents from being leaked or accessed. It would only let the data to flow in computer which is recognised and verified by one’s system. It only permits access to the system to ones already registered with the computer.

D) Digital Signature: Are created by using means of cryptography by applying algorithms. This has its prominent use in the business of banking where customer’s signature is identified by using this method before banks enter into huge transactions.

5. Investigations And Search Procedures.
Section 75 of Information Technology Act, 2000 takes care of jurisdictional aspect of cyber crimes, and one would be punished irrespective of his nationality and place of commission of offence. Power of investigation is been given to police officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of police or any officer of the Central Government or a State Government authorised by Central Government. He may enter any public place, conduct a search and arrest without warrant person who is reasonably expected to have committed an offence or about to commit computer related crime. Accused has to be produced before magistrate within 24 hours of arrest. Provisions of Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 regulate the procedure of entry, search and arrest of the accused.

5.1. Problems Underlying Tracking Of Offence.
Most of the times the offenders commit crime and their identity is hard to be identified. Tracking cyber criminals requires a proper law enforcing agency through cyber border co-operation of governments, businesses and institutions of other countries. Most of the countries lack skilled law enforcement personnel to deal with computer and even broader Information technology related crimes. Usually law enforcement agencies also don’t take crimes serious, they have no importance of enforcement of cyber crimes, and even if they undertake to investigate they are posed with limitation of extra-territorial nature of crimes.

6. How Efficient Is Information Technology Act 2000?
It can’t be disputed that Information Technology Act, 2000 though provides certain kinds of protections but doesn’t cover all the spheres of the I.T where the protection must be provided. Copyright and trade mark violations do occur on the net but Copy Right Act 1976, or Trade Mark Act 1994 are silent on that which specifically deals with the issue. Therefore have no enforcement machinery to ensure the protection of domain names on net. Transmission of e-cash and transactions online are not given protection under Negotiable Instrument Act, 1881. Online privacy is not protected only Section 43 (penalty for damage to computer or computer system) and 72 (Breach of confidentiality or privacy) talks about it in some extent but doesn’t hinder the violations caused in the cyberspace.

Even the Internet Service Providers (ISP) who transmits some third party information without human intervention is not made liable under the Information Technology Act, 2000. One can easily take shelter under the exemption clause, if he proves that it was committed without his knowledge or he exercised due diligence to prevent the offence. It’s hard to prove the commission of offence as the terms “due diligence” and “lack of knowledge” have not been defined anywhere in the Act. And unfortunately the Act doesn’t mention how the extra territoriality would be enforced. This aspect is completely ignored by the Act, where it had come into existence to look into cyber crime which is on the face of it an international problem with no territorial boundaries.

7. Data Protection.
Information stored on the owner of the computer would be his property and must be protected there are many ways such information can be misused by ways like ‘unauthorized access, computer viruses, data typing, modification erasures etc. Legislators had been constantly confronted with problem in balancing the right of the individuals on the computer information and other people’s claim to be allowed access to information under Human Rights. The first enactment in this regard was Data Protection Act by Germany in the year 1970. This was widely accepted by the world and also contributed to the Information Technology Act.

The origin of laws on date protection dates back to 1972 when United Kingdom formed a committee on privacy which came up with ten principles, on the bases of which data protection committee was set up. Data Protection Act, 1984 (DPA) was United Kingdom’s response to the Council of Europe Convention 1981, this Act lacked proper enforcement mechanism and has done little to enforce individual’s rights and freedoms. European Union directive in 1995, European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), Human Rights Acts, and further introduction of Data Protection Act, 1998 have done much in the field of Data protection in today’s date. Data Protection Act has following aims and objectives:

Personal information shall only be obtained for lawful purpose, it shall only be used for that purpose, mustn’t be disclosed or used to effectuate any unlawful activity, and must be disposed off when the purpose is fulfilled.

Though Data Protection Act aims at protecting privacy issues related to the information but still we find no mention of the word “privacy” in the Act, nor is it defined, further the protection comes with various exemptions, including compulsory notification from the Commissioner in certain cases of the personal data. Due to the change in the regime of information technology for the date European Convention came, on which the Act is based amendments in the Act is advised for matching the present situation and curbing the crime in efficient way.

There is no Data Protection Act in India, the only provisions which talks about data protection are Section 72 and Section 43 of Information Technology Act, 2000. There must be a new Law to deal with the situation for a person to know that the Controller is processing his data concerning him and also that he must know the purpose for which it has been processed. It is a fundamental right of the Individual to retain private information concerning him provided under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which says: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law”. And due to the increasing trend of the Crime rate in the field separate legislation is required in this context for better protection of individuals.

8. Conclusion & Suggestions.
No one can deny the positive role of the cyber space in today’s world either it be political, economic, or social sphere of life. But everything has its pro’s and corns, cyber terrorists have taken over the technology to their advantage. To curb their activities, the Information Technology Act 2000 came into existence which is based on UNICITRAL model of Law on e-commerce. It has many advantages as it gave legal recognition to electronic records, transactions, authentication and certification of digital signatures, prevention of computer crimes etc. but at the same time is inflicted with various drawbacks also like it doesn’t refer to the protection of Intellectual Property rights, domain name, cyber squatting etc. This inhibits the corporate bodies to invest in the Information technology infrastructure. Cases like Dawood and Quattrochi clearly reveals the problem of enforceability machinery in India. Cryptography is new phenomenon to secure sensitive information. There are very few companies in present date which have this technology. Other millions of them are still posed to the risk of cyber crimes.

There is an urgent need for unification of internet laws to reduce the confusion in their application. For e.g. for publication of harmful contents or such sites, we have Indian Penal Code (IPC), Obscenity Law, Communication Decency law, self regulation, Information Technology Act 2000 ,Data Protection Act, Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code etc but as they deal with the subject vaguely therefore lacks efficient enforceability mechanism. Due to numerous Laws dealing with the subject there lays confusion as to their applicability, and none of the Law deals with the subject specifically in toto. To end the confusion in applicability of Legislation picking from various laws to tackle the problem, i would suggest unification of laws by taking all the internet laws to arrive at Code which is efficient enough to deal with all the problems related to internet crimes. Although these legislations talk about the problem but they don’t provide an end to it. There’s need for a one Cyber legislation which is co-ordinated to look after cyber crimes in all respects.With passage of time and betterment of technology in the present date, has also resulted in numerous number of Information technology related crimes therefore changes are suggested to combat the problem equally fast.

Crucial aspect of problem faced in combating crime is that, most of the countries lack enforcement agencies to combat crime relating to internet and bring some level of confidence in users. Present law lacks teeth to deter the terrorist groups for committing cyber crimes if you see the punishment provides by the Act it’s almost ineffective, inefficient and only provides punishment of 3 years at the maximum. Harsher laws are required at this alarming situation to deal with criminals posing threat to security of funds, information, destruction of computer systems etc.Data protection, by promotion of general principles of good information practice with an independent supervisory regime, would enable the law to maintain sufficient flexibility to achieve an appropriate balance between the need to protect the rights of the individuals and to have a control over the way their personal information have been used would be helpful in this increasingly networked economy. Just having two provisions in the Information Technology Act, 2000 for protection of data without any proper mechanism for to tackle the crime makes their mention in the Act redundant.

Information Technology Act is applicable to all the persons irrespective of their nationalities (i.e. to non-citizens also) who commits offence under the Information Technology Act outside India, provided the act or conduct constituting the offence or contravention involves computer, computer systems, or computer networks located in India under Section 1 and Section 75 of the Information Technology Act, but this provision lacks practical value until and unless the person can be extradited to India. Therefore it’s advised that we should have Extradition treaties among countries. To make such provisions workable.

It’s like ‘eye for an eye’ kind of situation where the technology can be curbed only by an understanding of the technology taken over by cyber terrorists. Even if the technology is made better enough to curb the computer related crime there is no guarantee if that would stay out of reach of cyber terrorists. Therefore Nations need to update the Law whether by amendments or by adopting sui generic system. Though Judiciary continues to comprehend the nature of computer related crimes there is a strong need to have better law enforcement mechanism to make the system workable.

Referances.
Sankar Sen, ‘Human Rights & Law Enforcement’, 1st ed., 2002, Concept Publishing Co., New Delhi.
Dr. Sub hash Chandra Gupta, ‘Information technology Act, 2000 and its Drawbacks’, National Conference on Cyber Laws & Legal Education, Dec. 22-24th 2001, NALSAR, University of Law, Print House, Hyderabad.
Dr. Farooq Ahmed, ‘Cyber Law in India (Laws on Internet)’, Pioneer Books, Delhi.
1992 U.S. App. LEXIS 9562 (4th May 4, 1992)
Dr. Farooq Ahmed, ‘Cyber Law in India (Laws on Internet)’, Pioneer Books, Delhi.
R v. Sean Cropp, Snearesbrook Crown Court, 4th July 1991. (303)
B.R Suri & T.N Chhabra, ‘Cyber Crime’, 1st ed., 2002, Pentagon Press, Delhi.
Dr. Farooq Ahmed, ‘Cyber Law in India (Laws on Internet)’, Pioneer Books, Delhi.
Rupam Banerjee, ‘The Dark world of Cyber Crime’, July 7, 2006 can be viewed at http://articles.sakshay.in/index.php?article=15257
Prof. Unni, ‘Legal Regulations on Internet Banking’, 2007, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
“Anusuya Sadhu”, “The Menace of Cyber Crime”, can be viewed at
http://www.legalserviceindia.com/articles/article+2302682a.htm
3 L.R.Q.B. 360, 371 (Q.B. 1868).
AIR 1965 SC 881.
413 U.S 15.24 (1973)
Dr. Farooq Ahmed, ‘Cyber Law in India (Laws on Internet)’, Pioneer Books, Delhi.
B.R Suri & T.N Chhabra, ‘Cyber Crime’, 1st ed., 2002, Pentagon Press, Delhi.
[1997] 2 All ER 548
Justice S.B. Sinha, ‘Cyber Crime in the Information Age’, National Conference on Cyber Laws & Legal Education, Dec. 22-24th 2001, NALSAR, University of Law, Print House, Hyderabad.
Prof. V.K Unni, ‘Legal strategies for a Robust I.T Infrastructure’, 2007, NALSAR University of Law Hyderabad.
Dr. Farooq Ahmed, ‘Cyber Law in India (Laws on Internet)’, Pioneer Books, Delhi.
Sanker Sen, ‘Human Rights & Law Enforcement’, 1st ed., 2002, Concept Publications, New Delhi.
Dr. Farooq Ahmed, ‘Cyber Law in India (Laws on Internet)’, Pioneer Books, Delhi.
Ajmal Eddappagath, ‘Cyber Laws and Enforcement’
Can be viewed at http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/dec2004/article2.htm
Dr. Subhash Chandra Gupta – Information Technology Act, 2000 and its drawbacks, ‘National Conference on Cyber Laws & Legal Education’, Dec. 22-24th 2001, NALSAR, University of Law, Print House, Hyderabad.
C. Suman and Duvva Pavan Kumar, ‘Data Protection – An overview’, National Conference on Cyber Laws & Legal Education, Dec. 22-24th 2001, NALSAR, University of Law, Print House, Hyderabad.
Cris Reed and John Angel, ‘Computer Law’, 5th ed., 2003, Oxford University Press Inc., New York.
S.K Verma and Raman Mittal, ‘Legal Dimensions of Cyber Space, 2004, Indian Law Institute, New Delhi.
Cris Reed and John Angel, ‘Computer Law’, 5th ed., 2003, Oxford University Press Inc. New York.

Life, inventions, and business career

Early life

Ray Kurzweil grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. He was born to secular Jewish parents who had escaped Austria just before the onset of World War II, and he was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing. His father was a musician and composer and his mother was a visual artist. His uncle, an engineer at Bell Labs, taught young Ray the basics of computer science. In his youth, he was an avid reader of science fiction literature. In 1963, at age fifteen, he wrote his first computer program. Designed to process statistical data, the program was used by researchers at IBM. Later in high school he created a sophisticated pattern-recognition software program that analyzed the works of classical composers, and then synthesized its own songs in similar styles. The capabilities of this invention were so impressive that, in 1965, he was invited to appear on the CBS television program I’ve Got a Secret, where he performed a piano piece that was composed by a computer he also had built. Later that year, he won first prize in the International Science Fair for the invention, and he was also recognized by the Westinghouse Talent Search and was personally congratulated by President Lyndon B. Johnson during a White House ceremony.

Mid-life

In 1968, during his sophomore year at MIT, Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers submitted by each student applicant. When he was 20, he sold the company to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000 (roughly $500,000 in 2006 dollars) plus royalties. He earned a BS in Computer Science and Literature in 1970 from MIT.

In 1974, Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Before that time, scanners had only been able to read text written in a few fonts. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them aloud. However, this device required the invention of two enabling technologieshe CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer. Under his direction, development of these technologies was completed, and on January 13, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a news conference headed by him and the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind. Called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the device covered an entire tabletop. It gained him mainstream recognition: on the day of the machine’s unveiling, Walter Cronkite used the machine to give his signature soundoff, “And that’s the way it is, January 13, 1976.” While listening to The Today Show, musician Stevie Wonder heard a demonstration of the device and purchased the first production version of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, beginning a lifelong friendship between himself and Kurzweil.

According to former Kurzweil Computer Products employees, the Kurzweil Reading Machine’s designer was engineer Richard Brown, a KCP employee at the time.

Kurzweil’s next major business venture began in 1978, when Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. LexisNexis was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload paper legal and news documents onto its nascent online databases.

Two years later, Kurzweil sold his company to Xerox, which had an interest in further commercializing paper-to-computer text conversion. Kurzweil Computer Products became a subsidiary of Xerox formerly known as Scansoft and now as Nuance Communications, and he functioned as a consultant for the former until 1995.

Kurzweil’s next business venture was in the realm of electronic music technology. After a 1982 meeting with Stevie Wonder, in which the latter lamented the divide in capabilities and qualities between electronic synthesizers and traditional musical instruments, Kurzweil was inspired to create a new generation of music synthesizers capable of accurately duplicating the sounds of real instruments. Kurzweil Music Systems was founded in the same year, and in 1984, the Kurzweil K250 was unveiled. The machine was capable of imitating a number of instruments, and in tests musicians were unable to discern the difference between the Kurzweil K250 on piano mode from a normal grand piano. The recording and mixing abilities of the machine, coupled with its abilities to imitate different instruments made it possible for a single user to compose and play an entire orchestral piece.

Kurzweil Music Systems was sold to Korean musical instrument manufacturer Young Chang in 1990. As with Xerox, Kurzweil remained as a consultant for several years.

Later life

Concurrent with Kurzweil Music Systems, Ray Kurzweil created the company Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (KAI) to develop computer speech recognition systems for commercial use. The first product, which debuted in 1987, was the world’s first large-vocabulary speech recognition program, allowing human users to dictate to their computers via microphone and then have the device transcribe their speech into written text. Later, the company combined the speech recognition technology with medical expert systems to create the Kurzweil VoiceMed (today called Clinical Reporter) line of products, which allow doctors to write medical reports by speaking instead of writing. KAI exists today as Nuance Communications.

Kurzweil started Kurzweil Educational Systems in 1996 to develop new pattern-recognition-based computer technologies to help people with disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia and ADD in school. Products include the Kurzweil 1000 text-to-speech converter software program, which enables a computer to read electronic and scanned text aloud to blind or visually-impaired users, and the Kurzweil 3000 program, which is a multifaceted electronic learning system that helps with reading, writing, and study skills.

Raymond Kurzweil at the Singularity Summit at Stanford in 2006

During the 1990s Ray Kurzweil founded the Medical Learning Company. The company’s products included an interactive computer education program for doctors and a computer-simulated patient. Around the same time, Kurzweil started KurzweilCyberArt.com website featuring computer programs to assist the creative art process. The site used to offer free downloads of a program called AARON visual art synthesizer developed by Harold Cohennd of “Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet”, which automatically creates poetry. During this period he also started KurzweilAI.net, a website devoted towards showcasing news of scientific developments, publicizing the ideas of high-tech thinkers and critics alike, and promoting futurist-related discussion among the general population through the Mind-X forum.

In 1999, Kurzweil created a hedge fund called “FatKat” (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies) http://www.fatkat.com, which began trading in 2006. He has stated that the ultimate aim is to improve the performance of FatKat’s A.I. investment software program, enhancing its ability to recognize patterns in “currency fluctuations and stock-ownership trends.” He predicted in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, that computers will one day prove superior to the best human financial minds at making profitable investment decisions. In 2001, Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace released an album, titled Spiritual Machines, based on Kurzweil’s book. Kurzweil’s voice was featured in the album, reading excerpts from his book.

In June 2005, Ray Kurzweil introduced the “Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader” (K-NFB Reader) pocket-sized device consisting of a digital camera and computer unit. Like the Kurzweil Reading Machine of almost 30 years before, the K-NFB Reader is designed to aid blind people by reading written text aloud. The newer machine is portable and scans text through digital camera images, while the older machine is large and scans text through flatbed scanning.

Ray Kurzweil is currently making a movie due for release in 2010 called The Singularity is Near: A True Story About the Future based, in part, on his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near. Part fiction, part non-fiction, he interviews 20 big thinkers like Marvin Minsky, plus there is a B-line narrative story that illustrates some of the ideas, where a computer avatar (Ramona) saves the world from self-replicating microscopic robots.

In addition to Kurzweil’s movie, an independent, feature-length documentary was made about Kurzweil, his life, and his ideas called Transcendent Man. Filmmakers Barry and Felicia Ptolemy followed Kurzweil, documenting his global speaking tour. Premiered in 2009 at the Tribeca Film Festival, Transcendent Man documents Ray’s quest to reveal mankind’s ultimate destiny and explores many of the ideas found in his New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity is Near, including his concept of exponential growth, radical life expansion, and how we will transcend our biology. The Ptolemys documented Ray’s stated goal of bringing back his late father using AI. The film also features critics who argue against Kurzweil’s predictions.

Kurzweil said during a 2006 C-SPAN2 interview that he was working on a new book that focused on the inner workings of the human brain and how this could be applied to building AI.

While being interviewed for a February 2009 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Kurzweil expressed a desire to construct a genetic copy of his late father, Fredric Kurzweil, from DNA within his grave site. This feat would be achieved by deploying various nanorobots to send samples of DNA back from the grave, constructing a clone of Fredric and retrieving memories and recollectionsrom Ray’s mindf his father.

Books

Kurzweil’s first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was published in 1990. The nonfiction work discusses the history of computer AI and also makes forecasts regarding likely future developments. Other experts in the field of AI contribute heavily to the work in the form of essays. The Association of American Publishers’ awarded it the status of Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990.

Next, Kurzweil published a book on nutrition in 1993 called The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life. The book’s main idea is that high levels of fat intake are the cause of many health disorders common in the U.S., and thus that cutting fat consumption down to 10% of the total calories consumed would be optimal for most people.

In 1998, Ray Kurzweil published The Age of Spiritual Machines, which focuses heavily on further elucidating his theories regarding the future of technology, which themselves stem from his analysis of long-term trends in biological and technological evolution. Much focus goes into examining the likely course of AI development, along with the future of computer architecture.

Kurzweil’s next book published in 2004, returned to the subject of human health and nutrition. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever was co-authored by Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, a medical doctor and specialist in alternative medicine.

The Singularity Is Near was published in 2005. The book is currently being made into a movie starring Pauley Perrette (NCIS), and scheduled for 2010 release.

In February 2007, Ptolemaic Productions acquired the rights to The Singularity is Near, The Age of Spiritual Machines and Fantastic Voyage including the rights to Kurzweil’s life and ideas for the film Transcendent Man. The feature length documentary was directed by Barry Ptolemy.

Kurzweil’s newest book, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever, a follow-up on Fantastic Voyage, was released on April 28, 2009.

The book he’s currently working on is called “How The Mind Works and How To Build One”.

Recognition and awards

Kurzweil has been called the successor and “rightful heir to Thomas Edison”, and was also referred to by Forbes as “the ultimate thinking machine.”

Kurzweil has received these awards, among others:

First place in the 1965 International Science Fair for inventing the classical music synthesizing computer.

The 1978 Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The award is given annually to one “outstanding young computer professional” and is accompanied by a $35,000 prize. Ray Kurzweil won it for his invention of the Kurzweil Reading Machine.

The 1990 “Engineer of the Year” award from Design News.

The 1994 Dickson Prize in Science. One is awarded every year by Carnegie Mellon University to individuals who have “notably advanced the field of science.” Both a medal and a $50,000 prize are presented to winners.

The 1998 “Inventor of the Year” award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The 1999 National Medal of Technology. This is the highest award the President of the United States can bestow upon individuals and groups for pioneering new technologies, and the President dispenses the award at his discretion. Bill Clinton presented Ray Kurzweil with the National Medal of Technology during a White House ceremony in recognition of Kurzweil’s development of computer-based technologies to help the disabled.

The 2000 Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology. Two other individuals also received the same honor that year. The award is presented yearly to people who “exemplify the life, times and standard of contribution of Tesla, Westinghouse and Nunn.”

The 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize for a lifetime of developing technologies to help the disabled and to enrich the arts. Only one is meted out each year to highly successful, mid-career inventors. A $500,000 award accompanies the prize.

Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for inventing the Kurzweil Reading Machine. The organization “honors the women and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible.” Fifteen other people were inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year.

The Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award on April 20, 2009 for lifetime achievement as an inventor and futurist in computer-based technologies.

In 2008, the Arizona-Based experimental band “The Singularity Is Near” was formed, later changing their name to “Ray Kurzweil’s Face” in 2009. They are now respected as one of the most influential musical groups in Arizona over the past several years, raising awareness about Ray’s world-changing ideas and inventions, more specifically how humans will relate to technology and the universe in the coming 4060 years.

Kurzweil has received sixteen honorary degrees from as many institutions:

Type of degree

College

Year awarded

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters

Hofstra University

1982

Honorary Doctorate of Music

Berklee College of Music

1987

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Northeastern University

1988

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1988

Honorary Doctorate of Engineering

Merrimack College

1989

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters

Misericordia University

1989

Honorary Doctorate of Science

New Jersey Institute of Technology

1990

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Queens College, City University of New York

1991

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Dominican College

1993

Honorary Doctorate in Science and Humanities

Michigan State University

2000

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters

Landmark College

2002

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

2005

Honorary Doctorate of Science

DePaul University

2006

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Bloomfield College

2007

Honorary Doctorate of Science

McGill University

2008

Honorary Doctorate of Science

Clarkson University

2009

Involvement with futurism and transhumanism

This section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (June 2009)

After several years of closely tracking trends in the computer and machine industries, Kurzweil came to a realization: the innovation rate of computer technology was increasing not linearly but rather exponentially. With this, Kurzweil formed a method of predicting the course of technological development. As a computer scientist, Kurzweil also understood that there was no technical reason that this type of performance growth could not continue well into the 21st century.

Since growth in so many fields of science and technology depends upon computing power, such improvements translate into improvements to human knowledge and to non-computer sciences like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and materials science. Considering the ongoing exponential growth in computer capabilities, this means many new technologies will become available long before the majority of peopleho intuitively think linearly about technological advancexpect. This core idea is expressed by Kurzweil’s “Law of Accelerating Returns”.

Kurzweil projects that between now and 2050 medical advances will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving and even improving quality of life as they age. The aging process could at first be slowed, then halted, and then reversed as newer and better medical technologies became available. Kurzweil argues that much of this will be due to advances in medical nanotechnology, which will allow microscopic machines to travel through one’s body and repair all types of damage at the cellular level. But equally consequential developments will occur within the realm of computers as they become increasingly powerful, numerous and cheap between now and 2050. Kurzweil predicts that a computer will pass the Turing test by 2029, by demonstrating to have a mind (intelligence, self awareness, emotional richness) indistinguishable from a human’s. He predicts that the first AI is built around a computer simulation of a human brain, which is made possible by previous, nanotech-guided brainscanning. An AI machine could handle the full range of human intellectual tasks and would be both emotional and self-aware. Kurzweil suggests that AIs will inevitably become far smarter and more powerful than un-enhanced humans. He suggests that AIs will exhibit moral thinking and will respect humans as their ancestors. According to his predictions, the line between humans and machines will blur as a natural part of technological evolution. Cybernetic implants will greatly enhance human cognitive and physical abilities, and allow direct interface between humans and machines.

Kurzweil’s standing as a leading futurist and Transhumanist has gained him positions of prominence within pertinent organizations:

In December 2004, Kurzweil joined the advisory board of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

In October 2005, Kurzweil joined the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.

On May 13, 2006, Kurzweil was the first speaker at the Stanford University Singularity Summit.

In February 2009, Kurzweil, in cooperation with Google and the NASA Ames Research Center, announced the creation of Singularity University. The University’s self-described mission is to “assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity grand challenges”. Using Kurzweil’s Singularity concept as a foundation, the University, whose initial class of 40 Fellows began their nine-week graduate program in June, 2009, provides students the skills and tools to guide the process of the Singularity “for the benefit of humanity and its environment”. Singularity U encompasses cross-disciplinary studies in ten different scientific and future-oriented tracks, taught by industry experts.

Stand on nanotechnology

Wikinews has related news:

Climate change

Kurzweil is on the Army Science Advisory Board, has testified before Congress on the subject of nanotechnology, and sees considerable potential in the science to solve significant global problems such as poverty, disease, and climate change, viz. Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill (July, 2006).

He predicts nanobots will be used to maintain the human body and to extend the human lifespan.

Kurzweil has stressed the extreme potential dangers of nanotechnology, but argues that in practice, progress cannot be stopped, and any attempt to do so will retard the progress of defensive and beneficial technologies more than the malevolent ones, increasing the danger. He says that the proper place of regulation is to make sure progress proceeds safely and quickly. He applies this reasoning to biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and technology in general.[citation needed]

The Law of Accelerating Returns

Main article: Accelerating change

In his controversial 2001 essay, “The Law of Accelerating Returns”, Kurzweil proposes an extension of Moore’s law that forms the basis of the concept of “Technological Singularity”.

Predictions

Main article: Predictions made by Raymond Kurzweil

This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (December 2007)

The Age of Intelligent Machines

Arguably, Kurzweil gained a large amount of credibility as a futurist from his first book The Age of Intelligent Machines. It was written from 1986 to 1989 and published in 1990. Building on Ithiel de Sola Pool’s “Technologies of Freedom” (1983), Kurzweil forecast the demise of the Soviet Union due to new technologies such as cellular phones and fax machines disempowering authoritarian governments by removing state control over the flow of information. In the book Kurzweil also extrapolated preexisting trends in the improvement of computer chess software performance to predict correctly that computers would beat the best human players by 1998, and most likely in that year. In fact, the event occurred in May 1997 when chess World Champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue computer in a well-publicized chess tournament. Perhaps most significantly, Kurzweil foresaw the explosive growth in worldwide Internet use that began in the 1990s. At the time of the publication of The Age of Intelligent Machines, there were only 2.6 million Internet users in the world, and the medium was unreliable, difficult to use, and deficient in content, making Kurzweil’s realization of its future potential especially prescient, given the technology’s limits at that time. He also stated that the Internet would explode not only in the number of users but in content as well, eventually granting users access “to international networks of libraries, data bases, and information services”. Additionally, Kurzweil correctly foresaw that the preferred mode of Internet access would inevitably be through wireless systems, and he was also correct to estimate that the latter would become practical for widespread use in the early 21st century.

Kurzweil also accurately forecast that, by the end of the 1990s, many documents would exist solely in computers and on the Internet, and that they would commonly be embedded with sounds, animations, and videos that would inhibit their transfer to paper format. Moreover, he foresaw that cellular phones would grow in popularity while shrinking in size for the foreseeable future.

The Age of Spiritual Machines

In 1999, Kurzweil published a second book titled The Age of Spiritual Machines, which goes into more depth explaining his futurist ideas. The third and final section of the book is devoted to elucidating the specific course of technological advancements Kurzweil predicts the world will experience over the next century. Titled “To Face the Future”, the section is divided into four chapters respectively named “2009″, “2019″, “2029″, and “2099″. In each chapter, Kurzweil makes predictions about what life and technology will be like in that year.

While the veracity of Kurzweil’s predictions beyond 2009 cannot yet be determined, many of the ideas of the “2009″ chapter have been scrutinized. To begin, Kurzweil’s claims that 2009 would be a year of continued transition as purely electronic computer memory continued to replace older rotating memory seems to be disproved by continued rapid growth in hard-disk capacity and unit sales, while high-capacity flash drives have yet to catch on in high-volume applications. Nonetheless, solid state storage is the preferred means of storage in low-volume applications such as MP3 players, handheld gaming systems, cellular phones and digital cameras. Many companies produce a 256 GB solid state drive for use in laptops and desktops, but these drives will cost over $600, making storage on them cost roughly five times the price of comparable hard-disk storage. On the other hand, Kurzweil correctly foresaw the growing ubiquity of wireless Internet access and cordless computer peripherals. Perhaps of more importance, Kurzweil presaged the explosive growth in peer-to-peer filesharing and the emergence of the Internet as a major medium for commerce and for accessing media such as movies, television programs, newspaper and magazine text, and music. He also claimed that three-dimensional computer chips would be in common use by 2009 (though older, “2-D” chips would still predominate). But although IBM has recently developed the necessary chip-stacking technology and announced plans to begin using three-dimensional chips in its supercomputers and for wireless communication applications, chip stacking remains a low-volume technology in 2009.

The Singularity is Near

While this book focuses on the future of technology and the human race as did The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil makes very few concrete, short-term predictions in The Singularity is Near, though longer-term visions are present in abundance. He recently discussed the singularity with Vice Magazine and was filmed for a documentary on the magazine online network VBS.tv.

Work on nutrition, health and lifestyle

Ray Kurzweil admits that he cared little for his health until age 35, when he was diagnosed with a glucose intolerance, an early form of type II diabetes (a major risk factor for heart disease). Kurzweil then found a doctor that shares his non-conventional beliefs to develop an extreme regimen involving hundreds of pills, chemical i.v. treatments, red wine and various other methods to attempt to live longer.

Kurzweil believes that the radical technological advances made throughout the 21st century will ultimately culminate with the discovery of means to reverse the aging process, cure any disease, and repair presently unrepairable injuries. Kurzweil has thus focused himself towards following a lifestyle intended to heighten his odds of living to see the day when science can make him immortal. Kurzweil calls this the “Bridge to a Bridge to a Bridge” strategy: The first bridge to longer life is Kurzweil’s regimen, whereas the second- and third bridges are based on advanced biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, respectively, that have not yet been invented. Kurzweil believes they will allow for progressively longer human lifespans to the point of immortality and that successfully implementing the first “bridge” now allows one to reach the second in the future, which then allows one to reach the third.

Some elements of Kurzweil’s lifestyle are conventional. He exercises frequently, does not eat to excess, and does not abuse recreational drugs. Many others, however, are controversial and may be explained by his obsession with living as long as possible. Kurzweil ingests “250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea” every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to “reprogram” his biochemistry. Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.

Although not supported by science, Kurzweil and many others believe that consuming large amounts of water is necessary for flushing toxins out of the body, and that alkaline water allows the body to preserve important enzymes used for neutralizing acidic metabolic wastes. For this reason, Kurzweil abhors soft drinks and coffee, which are both acidic. Kurzweil believes that acidic drinks drain detoxifying enzyme reserves. Kurzweil has taken criticism from nutritionists and scientists for his advocacy of alkaline water’s alleged health benefits and other unconventional beliefs, and he responded to this over the Internet. Green tea and red wine contain antioxidants that neutralize free radicals. Kurzweil also consumes red wine because it contains the compound resveratrol, which may help to fight heart disease according to some evidence, but it is also a potentiator of breast carcinomas which may prove to out-weigh any suggested benefit. Kurzweil also takes pills containing high concentrations of the chemical because the amount in red wine is extremely inconsistent.

On weekends, Kurzweil also undergoes intravenous transfusions of chemical cocktails at a clinic which he believes will reprogram his biochemistry. He routinely measures the chemical composition of his own bodily fluids, undergoes preemptive medical tests for many diseases and disorders, and keeps detailed records about the content of all the meals he eats. On that last note, Kurzweil only eats organic foods with low glycemic loads and claims it has been years since he last consumed anything containing sugar. Kurzweil considers foods rich in sugars and carbohydrates to be unhealthy since they spike the levels of glucose and insulin in the bloodstream, leading to health problems in the long term. He instead eats mainly vegetables, lean meats, tofu, and low glycemic load carbohydrates, and only uses extra virgin olive oil for cooking. Kurzweil also diligently eats foods rich with Omega-3 fatty acids (including small, wild salmon).

Moreover, Kurzweil makes it a priority to get sufficient sleep for physical and psychological health, and he maintains low stress levels in part by meditating and getting massages weekly. He exercises daily with walking, bike-riding and using workout machines, but advises against high-impact forms of exercise. Kurzweil claims that his rigorous efforts have yielded positive results, pointing to his vitamin-selling business partner who claims his “biological age” is more than a decade younger than his chronological age. In fact, Kurzweil claims that his personal health regimen has actually slowed down his rate of aging. He also advocates maintaining a slightly below-average body weight on the grounds that it imparts some of the life-extension benefits of full caloric restriction.

Kurzweil joined the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company. In the event of his death, Kurzweil’s body will be chemically preserved, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at an Alcor facility in the hope that future medical technology will be able to revive him.

Kurzweil has authored three books on the subjects of nutrition, health and immortality: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and TRANSCEND: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever. In all, he recommends that other people emulate his health practices to the best of their abilities.

Kurzweil and his current “anti-aging” doctor, Terry Grossman, MD., now have two websites promoting their first and second book, and sells their “longevity products”, many of which can be found on medical scam warning sites.

Stance on religion

Though Kurzweil’s parents were Jewish, they raised him as a Unitarian and exposed him to many different faiths during his youth. Kurzweil gave a 2007 keynote speech to the United Church of Christ in Hartford, Connecticut, alongside Barack Obama, who was then a Presidential candidate. In The Singularity is Near he expresses a need for a new religion based on the principle of mutual respect between sentient life forms, and on the principle of respecting knowledge. This religion would not have a leader, instead being purely personal to adherents.

According to Kurzweil he primary role of traditional religion is deathist rationalizationhat is, rationalizing the tragedy of death as a good thing. In order to benefit from what the Singularity can bring, we need to overcome our deathist rationalization. We need to sweep traditional religion out of our road.59]

“Religious tradition might attempt to slow down technological innovation, transhumanists accuse religious representatives of holding a vested interest in provenance over matters of death and immortality. One of the impediments to the advance toward cybernetic immortality is religion, they say. Religion stands in the way. Religion threatens to block progress. This is because religion has traditionally sought to provide a palliative for people faced with death. Religion brings acceptance of death, and comfort with that acceptance. Ready to engage in combat with traditional religion, in Promethean style Kurzweil wants to defy death and use nanotechnology as a weapon to defeat death.”

Criticism

Even beyond philosophical arguments over whether a machine can “think” (see Philosophy of artificial intelligence), Kurzweil’s ideas have generated much criticism within the scientific community and in the media. Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called the notion of a technological singularity “intelligent design for the IQ 140 people…This proposition that we’re heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably differentt’s fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can’t obscure that fact for me.”

VR pioneer Jaron Lanier has been one of the strongest critics of Kurzweil ideas, describing them as ybernetic totalism (totalitarianism), and has outlined his views on the culture surrounding Kurzweil predictions in an essay for Edge.org entitled One Half of a Manifesto.

Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gdel, Escher, Bach, has said of Kurzweil’s and Hans Moravec’s books: “It as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can’t possibly figure out what’s good or bad. It’s an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it’s very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they’re not stupid.”

Although the idea of a technological singularity is a popular concept in science fiction, some authors such as Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling have voiced scepticism about its real-world plausibility. Sterling expressed his views on the singularity scenario in a talk at the Long Now Foundation entitled The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole. Other prominent AI thinkers and computer scientists such as Daniel Dennett, Rodney Brooks, and David Gelernter have also criticized Kurzweil projections.

Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, agrees with Kurzweil’s timeline of future progress, but thinks that technologies such as AI, nanotechnology and advanced biotechnology will create a dystopian world.

Daniel Lyons, writing in Newsweek, criticized Kurzweil for some of his predictions which turned out to be wrong; such as the economy continuing to boom from the 1998 dot-com through 2009, a US company having a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, a supercomputer achieving 20 petaflops, speech recognition being in widespread use and cars that would drive themselves using sensors installed in highways; all by 2009. To the charge that 20 petaflop supercomputer was not produced in the time he predicted, Kurzweil responded that he considers Google a giant supercomputer, and that it is capable of 20 petaflops.

Biologist P.Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil’s predictions as being based on “New Age spiritualism” rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology. Myers also says that Kurzweil picks and chooses events that appear to demonstrate his claim of exponential technological increase leading up to a singularity, and ignores events that do not.

See also

Accelerating change

Paradigm shift

Simulated reality

Singularity University

Technological singularity

Transhumanism

Transcendent Man (film)

Predictive medicine

Full Genome Sequencing

References

^ Inventor of the Week

^ KurzweilAI.net

^ Piano performance is seen at the beginning of his C-SPAN interview on CSPAN-2 Book TV, November 5, 2006

^ a b Intel Science Talent Search (STS): STS Alumni & Their Honors

^ http://www.kurzweiltech.com/raybio.html

^ links.jstor.org

^ See details at: http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=542059.

^ The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earthay 14, 2007

^ a b Raymond Kurzweil at the Internet Movie Database

^ KUSHNER, David (February 19, 2009), “When Man & Machine Merge”, Rolling Stone, http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/25939914/when_man__machine_merge 

^ Era of smart people is dawning

^ “Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Singularity”. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2007/11/kurzweil_qa. Retrieved 2008-01-12. 

^ Singularity The Movie release date

^ “Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever”. http://www.rayandterry.com/transcend/. 

^ “Interview H+ Magazine Winter 2009″. http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/ray-kurzweil-h-interview. 

^ http://www.kurzweiltech.com/rayspeakerbio.html

^ Survival of the Machines

^ http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS106533+03-Jan-2008+PRN20080103

^ ACM Awards: Grace Murray Hopper Award

^ ACM: Fellows Award / Raymond Kurzweil

^ Engineer of the Year Hall of Fame, 6/12/2007

^ Dickson Prize

^ Corporation names new members

^ National Medal of Technology Recipients, Technology Administration

^ The National Medal of Technology

^ Telluride Tech Festival

^ Winners’ Circle: Raymond Kurzweil

^ Lemelson-MIT Prize

^ Ray Kurzweil Inventor Profile

^ Hall of Fame Overview

^ Hall of Fame 2002

^ http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/news_single.html?id=10468

^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n http://www.kurzweiltech.com/raycv.html

^ http://www.planetpatent.com/Articles/RayKurzweilLandmarkInventions.htm

^ http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/item/?item_id=100220

^ http://www.clarkson.edu/news/view.php?id=2249

^ singinst.org

^ lifeboat.com

^ sfgate.com

^ http://singularityu.org/about/faq/

^ Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill (July, 2006)

^ “Machines ‘to match man by 2029′”. BBC News. 2008-02-16. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm. Retrieved 2008-02-17. 

^ a b “In Depth: Ray Kurzweil”. CSPAN-2. Book TV. 2006-11-05. Archived from the original on 2007-02-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20070220014203/http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=7515&schedID=457. Retrieved 2008-02-17.  at 85, 147, 167 and 173 minutes into 3 hour interview

^ “In Depth: Ray Kurzweil” (RealAudio). Book TV. http://www.booktv.org/ram/feature/1106/arc_btv110506_4.ram. Retrieved 2008-02-17.  direct link to 3 hour Kurzweil interview

^ “The Law of Accelerating Returns”

^ Fleeing the dot.com era: decline in Internet usage

^
^ IBM Extends Moore’s Law to the Third Dimension

^ RAY KURZWEIL- That Singularity Guy Vice magazine. April 2009

^ Youtube video :The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil

^ Wired News: ” Never Say Die: Live Forever”

^ Glenn Beck Interview with Ray Kurzweil

^ Five Myths About Water

^ Ray Kurweil Discusses Alkaline and Ionized Water

^ Quackwatch.org article about resveratrol

^ Fantasic Voyage

^ Ray and Terry’s

^ Quackwatch.org’s list of supplements, etc.

^ a b Simon Young and Robert A. Freitas (2005). Designer Evolution, p. 372, Prometheus Books, ISBN 13-9781591022909.

^ O’Keefe, Brian (2007-05-02). “The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth”. Fortune. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/. Retrieved 2008-08-28. 

^ Lanier, Jaron. “One Half of a Manifesto”. Edge.org. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_p1.html. Retrieved 2008-08-28. 

^ Ross, Greg. “An interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter”. American Scientist. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hofstadter. Retrieved 2008-08-28. 

^ Miller, Robin (2004-10-20). “Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor”. Slashdot. http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217. Retrieved 2008-08-28. “My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware’s nothing more than a really complicated space heater.” 

^ Brand, Stewart (2004-06-14). “Bruce Sterling – “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole”". The Long Now Foundation. http://blog.longnow.org/2004/06/14/bruce-sterling-the-singularity-your-future-as-a-black-hole/. Retrieved 2009-06-08. 

^ Sterling, Bruce. “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (MP3). http://media.longnow.org/seminars/salt-0200406-sterling/salt-0200406-sterling.mp3. “It an end-of-history notion, and like most end-of-history notions, it is showing its age.” 

^ Dennett, Daniel. “The Reality Club: One Half Of A Manifesto”. Edge.org. http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#dennett. “”I’m glad that Lanier entertains the hunch that Dawkins and I (and Hofstadter and others) ‘see some flaw in logic that insulates [our] thinking from the eschatalogical implications’ drawn by Kurzweil and Moravec. He right. I, for one, do see such a flaw, and I expect Dawkins and Hofstadter would say the same.”" 

^ Brooks, Rodney. “The Reality Club: One Half Of A Manifesto”. Edge.org. http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks. “I do not at all agree with Moravec and Kurzweil’s predictions for an eschatological cataclysm, just in time for their own memories and thoughts and person hood to be preserved before they might otherwise die.” 

^ Transcript of debate over feasibility of near-term AI (moderated by Rodney Brooks): “Gelernter, Kurzweil debate machine consciousness”. KurzweilAI.net. http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks. 

^ Joy, Bill (April 2000). “Why the future doesn’t need us”. Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html. Retrieved 2008-09-21. “…it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil…” 

^ a b Lyons, Daniel (May 2009). “I, Robot”. Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/197812/page/2. Retrieved 2009-05-22. “During the height of the dotcom boom in 1998, Kurzweil predicted that the economy would keep on booming right through 2009 (and on to 2019, for that matter) and that one U.S. company (he didn’t say which) would have a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion. Not even close. Kurzweil also predict-ed that by 2009 a top supercomputer would be capable of performing 20 quadrillion operations per second (20 petaflops in computer jargon), the same as the human brain. In fact, the top supercomputer just broke the one-petaflop markhough Kurzweil says he considers all of Google to be a giant supercomputer and that it is, indeed, capable of performing 20 petaflops. Kurzweil also predicted that by now our cars would be able to drive themselves by communicating with intelligent sensors embedded in highways, and that speech recognition would be in widespread use.” 

^ Lyons, Daniel (May 2009). “I, Robot”. Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/197812. Retrieved 2009-07-24. “Still, a lot of people think Kurzweil is completely bonkers and/or full of a certain messy byproduct of ordinary biological functions. They include P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who has used his blog to poke fun at Kurzweil and other armchair futurists who, according to Myers, rely on junk science and don’t understand basic biology. “I am completely baffled by Kurzweil’s popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination,” writes Myers. He says Kurzweil’s Singularity theories are closer to a deluded religious movement than they are to science. “It’s a New Age spiritualismhat’s all it is,” Myers says. “Even geeks want to find God somewhere, and Kurzweil provides it for them.”" 

^ Myers, Paul Zachary (February 2009). “Singularly silly singularity”. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/singularly_silly_singularity.php. Retrieved 2009-07-24. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Raymond Kurzweil

Kurzweil Companies web site

KurzweilAI.net – a vast resource, including some of his books for free

Raymond Kurzweil’s IP – all of Raymond Kurzweil’s US patents & patent applications

Ray and Terry’s Longevity Program

Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil, Chancellor

Transcendent Man – Official Site. Movie about Ray Kurzweil

Singularity is Near Movie (2009) – Official Site

The Singularity A comprehensive documentary about the Singularity (2010) – Official Site

Big Think official Ray Kurzweil page

Machine Dreams – CIO Magazine interview, October 15, 2004

Warfighting in the 21st Century – The Remote, Robotic, Robust, Size-Reduced, Virtual Reality Paradigm – Keynote address, 24th Army Science Conference, November 29, 2004

TED Talks: Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us at TED in 2005 (audio/video)

Robot Wars – news@nature site interview, February 8, 2005

The future, just around the bend, The Economist, 10 March 2005

The Council on Foreign Relations; An Exponentially Expanding Future From Exponentially Shrinking Technology, November 30 2005

Interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday – December 23, 2005

The Singularity Summit at Stanford, May 2006

Human v 2.0: Ray Kurzweil vs. Hugo de Garis October 24, 2006

25th Annual Army Science Conference November 27, 2006 Web Hosted Presentation, Slides, Video

Debate between Ray Kurzweil and David Gelernter at MIT on November 30 2006

Web 3.0 – How the next version of the Web will prepare us for the Singularity December 11, 2006

- The Edge Annual Question – 2007; What are you Optimistic About? Why?

Interview with Ray Kurzweil and Sample of Ray Kurzweil keynote from Interwoven’s GearUp Podcast

Ray Kurzweil interview on C-SPAN2 Book TV, 3 hours in length

The smartest futurist on earth – CNN Money article May 2, 2007

Accelerating Change presentation from Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), Third Conference, Queens’ College, Cambridge, England, 9 September 2007

Glenn Beck interview of Ray Kurzweil, May 30, 2008 and transcript of the interview.

Interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday – June 6, 2008

Audio: Ray Kurzweil in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum

Raymond Kurzweil at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata

NAME

Kurzweil, Raymond

ALTERNATIVE NAMES

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Author, Scientist, & Futurist

DATE OF BIRTH

February 12, 1948

PLACE OF BIRTH

Queens, New York, United States

DATE OF DEATH

PLACE OF DEATH

Categories: 1948 births | American health and wellness writers | American science writers | American technology writers | Artificial intelligence researchers | Austrian-American Jews | Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery | Futurologists | Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates | Lemelson-MIT Prize | Life extensionists | Living people | Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni | National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees | National Medal of Technology recipients | Singularitarianism | Transhumanists | ImmortalityHidden categories: Articles with hCards | Wikipedia articles needing style editing from June 2009 | All articles needing style editing | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from January 2008 | Articles that may contain original research from December 2007 | All articles that may contain original research | Articles with obsolete information | Cleanup from section | Wikipedia external links cleanup | Wikipedia spam cleanup

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