Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist who has been a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and has developed computer speech recognition systems for commercial use. In 1996, he started Kurzweil Educational Systems to develop new pattern-recognition-based computer technologies to help people with disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia and attention deficit disorder in school.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology. Mr. Kurzweil is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence, technological singularity and futurism.