http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/Background Description: At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny. Brief Description of Movie: The Singularity is Near, A True Story about the Future, based on Ray Kurzweil's New York Times best selling book, will be a full-length motion picture slated for theatrical release in Spring 2008. The movie intertwines a fast-paced A-line documentary with a B-line narrative story. A-Line: The A-line documentary will feature Ray Kurzweil interacting with a panoply of thinkers on the impact of exponentially expanding technologies on the nature of human life in the next half century. It will feature many cutting edge graphics and special effects. B-Line: The intertwined B-line is the story of Ramona, Ray Kurzweil's female alter ego, starting with actual footage of Kurzweil creating and demonstrating his virtual creation at the 2001 TED (technology-entertainment-design) conference, where Ray - as Ramona - sang Jefferson Airline's "White Rabbit." This presentation was the inspiration for the Warner Brothers' movie Simone where the character played by Al Pacino turns himself into Simone just as Ray turned himself into Ramona at TED. The B-line continues as Ramona goes into the future where she becomes more and more humanlike, and more and more independent, a Pinocchio story. She combats an attack of self-replicating nanobots (grey goo) and hires Alan Dershowitz (who will play himself) to press for her legal rights as a "person." The judge rules that he will grant her full legal personhood if she passes a "Turing test," in which she must appear indistinguishable from an actual human in a text conversation. She gets coaching from Tony Robbins (who will play himself) to become "more human." The story continues from here. . .
