FANTASTIC VOYAGE - Key Persons

Inventor Ray Kurzweil takes 250 nutritional supplements a day in his quest to live long enough to reap the benefits he expects from biotechnology. He says he's trying to reprogram his body, as he would his computer.

Isaac Asimov's 1966 science fiction classic, Fantastic Voyage, fascinated readers with its tale of miniaturized scientists traveling around inside the human body in a blood-cell-sized submarine, the Proteus. Back then, Asimov's story was fiction, but his "fantastic" idea was indeed prophetic. Today, almost-daily breakthroughs in medical technology have given us the ability to probe the mysteries of the human body literally from the inside out.

Job Titles:

• Author, Just War Against Terror

Jean Bethke Elshtain, author, Just War Against Terror : The Burden of American Power in a Violent World; University of Chicago ethics professor

Job Titles:

• Assistant Director of Publicity

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• Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Author, Making Malcolm

Michael Eric Dyson, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; author, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X and I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr.

Job Titles:

• Inventor, Entrepreneur
• Scientist, Futurist Author

RAY KURZWEIL is an inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist. Called "the restless genius" by the Wall Street Journal and "the ultimate thinking machine" by Forbes, Kurzweil's ideas on the future have been touted by his many fans, ranging from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton. MIT's Marvin Minsky writes that "with his brilliant descriptions of the coming connections of computers with immortality, Kurzweil clearly takes his place as a leading futurist of our time." George Gilder writes that "Kurzweil's ideas make all other roads to the computer future look like goat paths in Patagonia." Sun Microsystems Chief Scientist Bill Joy, whose own discussions of the promise and peril of technology have attracted worldwide attention, writes in his now famous Wired magazine cover story that "I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things." Stevie Wonder writes "Ray's technology and ideas have truly been among the sunshines of my life. Kurzweil's writings are a wonderful riff on the next century from a keen seer, a great inventor, and a good friend." Kurzweil's most recent national best-selling book, The Age of Spiritual Machines (Viking), has received widespread acclaim. It has achieved the #1 status on Amazon in the categories of both science and artificial intelligence and has been published in nine languages. The New York Times writes, "Kurzweil's latest book ranges widely over such juicy topics as entropy, chaos, the big bang, quantum theory, DNA computers, quantum computers, Godel's theorem, neural nets, genetic algorithms, nanoengineering, the Turing test, brain scanning, the slowness of neurons, chess playing programs, the Internet-the whole world of information technology past, present, and future. Kurzweil's writings are for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next." Wired magazine writes, "Ray Kurzweil has a knack for spotting the next new thing. He has been charging into the future for nearly 40 years. He's best known for guerrilla assaults on conventional wisdom." John Casti of Nature describes Kurzweil's latest book as a "mind expanding account of the rise of intelligent machines. . . .nothing less than a blueprint for how to shove Homo sapiens off centre-stage in evolution's endless play. . . .If you buy into Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns-and all empirical evidence currently available supports it completely-then the replacement of humans by machines as the primary intellectual force on Earth is indeed imminent." Ray Kurzweil is widely regarded as one of the leading inventors of our time. TIME Magazine writes, "Kurzweil's eclectic career and propensity of combining science with practical-often humanitarian-applications have inspired comparisons with Thomas Edison." Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition (OCR), the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed, large-vocabulary speech recognition. These technologies continue today as market leaders in their respective industries, industries that Ray Kurzweil pioneered. Kurzweil has successfully founded and developed nine companies in OCR, music synthesis, speech recognition, reading technology, virtual reality, financial investment, medical simulation, and cybernetic art. Kurzweil's web site, KurzweilAI.net, is a leading resource on artificial intelligence, with more than 100,000 readers. Ray Kurzweil received the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, the nation's largest award in invention and innovation, and was inducted in 2002 into the National Inventor Hall of Fame. He also received the 1999 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony. He has also received scores of other national and international awards, including the 1994 Dickson Prize (Carnegie Mellon University's top science prize), Engineer of the Year from Design News, Inventor of the Year from MIT, and the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. He has received twelve honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents. He has received seven national and international film awards. Kurzweil is a widely sought speaker and has given keynote presentations at many leading venues, including the Microsoft CEO Summit, the World Economic Forum, Pop!Tech, PC Expo, Business Week, The Council on Foreign Relations, SIGGRAPH, Cowen, TED, ICASSP, the American Psychiatric Association, Agenda, and many others. His presentations to diverse audiences combine wit and keen insight into contemporary issues of technology and its impact on society. His lectures often include appearances by "Ramona," his "virtual female alter ego," and other engaging demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies that Kurzweil and his teams have developed. Kurzweil has written five books and hundreds of articles. In recent years, there have been hundreds of articles each year by or about Ray Kurzweil in leading publications, including most major national magazines. His first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines (MIT Press), was named Best Computer Science Book of 1990. This book, written in the late 1980s, has been acclaimed for its remarkably accurate predictions about the 1990s and early 2000 years. His new book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (Rodale Books), coauthored with Terry Grossman, M.D., describes the science behind radical life extension. Another book, The Singularity is Near, When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking), is due to be published in Spring 2005. Ray Kurzweil hasn't given much thought to his epitaph or spent an afternoon shopping for a burial plot. It's not that the idea of death hasn't occurred to him; he's 56, his father died of a heart attack at 58, and heart disease claimed his paternal grandfather. Kurzweil just doesn't plan on dying. Ever. "I think death is a tragedy," he says. "We've rationalized that it's a good thing, because we've had no alternative." Kurzweil, one of the most influential living inventors, expects that rapidly accelerating progress in the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and medical devices will eradicate the scourge that is human expiration sometime within the next 50 years. His latest book, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, coauthored with Dr. Terry Grossman and published this month, is almost certainly the first diet book that promises not just to help readers drop excess pounds but to render them immortal. Ray Kurzweil is one of the world's leading entrepreneurs, thinkers, and futurists. A recipient of the National Medal of Technology, among many other honors, he is the author of three previous books: The Age of Spiritual Machines, The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, and The Age of Intelligent Machines. He lives in a suburb of Boston , Massachusetts .

Job Titles:

• Founder and Medical Director of Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colo

TERRY GROSSMAN, MD, MD(H) is the founder and medical director of Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colorado. His longevity medical practice attracts patients, including many VIPs (such as coauthor Ray Kurzweil) from around the country and the world. He graduated from Brandeis University in 1968 and the University of Florida School of Medicine in 1979. He spent 15 years (from 1980-1995) working as a community family doctor in the Colorado mountains. Dr. Grossman undertook the study of nutritional and anti-aging medicine in 1994 and in 1995 opened Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, which quickly grew into one of the largest complementary medical centers in the country. He is a member and board certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine as well as the American Holistic Medical Association. His special field of interest is nutritional medicine (the treatment of illness with nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and natural hormones) and anti-aging medicine. Dr. Grossman is licensed as an M.D., and an M.D.(H), a homeopathic medical doctor. He is assistant professor of family practice at The University of Colorado School of Medicine. Dr. Grossman is a widely sought lecturer on longevity medicine throughout the United States and has presented keynote addresses at anti-aging seminars in Japan, South Korea, South Africa and elsewhere. He is the author of the Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever. Arline Brecher, coauthor of Forty Something Forever, says, "I've met good writers and good doctors, but seldom are they one and the same. Dr. Terry Grossman breaks the mold and sets a new standard for physicians." Dr. Herbert L. Jacobs, Chairman, Complementary and Alternative Medicine Task Force of the Colorado Medical Society describes Dr. Grossman as "one of a handful of modern-day physicians who are laying the foundation for a new paradigm in medicine, combining cutting-edge medical knowledge with the best evidence-based complementary therapies." Terry Grossman, M.D. , practices nutritional and anti aging medicine and has written several popular articles on natural treatments for ailments. An expert in longevity medicine, he is the author of a leading book on life extension, The Baby Boomer's Guide to Living Forever. He lives in Denver . Terry Grossman, M.D., is the founder and medical director of Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colorado, a leading longevity clinic. Certified in antiaging medicine, he lectures internationally on longevity and antiaging strategies. In the words of Arline Brecher, coauthor of Forty Something Forever, "I've met good writers and good doctors, but seldom are they one and the same. Dr. Terry Grossman breaks the mold and sets a new standard for physicians." He is the author of The Baby Boomer's Guide to Living Forever.

Job Titles:

• Historian, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution Retired Classics Professor, California State University in Fresno