Sixteen "years ago, Kurzweil caused a stir with his book 'The Age of Intelligent Machines,' in which he made startling predictions about future developments in information technology. For example, he predicted that a machine would soon outperform a chess grand master. His prediction came true in 1997 when IBM's chess-playing computer Big Blue trounced grand master Gary Kasparov." He also predicted that the World Wide Web would arise in the mid-1990's, which it did.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil

http://www.singularity.com/aboutray.html