# Information Technology Can Compress Billions of Years Into Decades by Ray Kurzweil > "First the inevitability: the power of information technologies is doubling each year, and moreover comprises areas beyond computation, most notably our knowledge of biology and of our own intelligence. It took 15 years to sequence HIV and from that perspective the genome project seemed impossible in 1990. But the amount of genetic data we were able to sequence doubled every year while the cost came down by half each year." > **— Ray Kurzweil**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [The near-term inevitability of radical life extension and expansion](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10547) — Edge published this passage in its 2006 Annual Question collection, *What Is Your Dangerous Idea?*. The full response preserves the qualifications and argument surrounding this exact extract. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2006 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2006 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first archive record for the complete yearly response cohort. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/MARS|MARS]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|Valley Roots]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Technological Evolution|Technological Evolution]] - [[wiki/Substrate-Independent Evolution|Substrate-Independent Evolution]] - [[wiki/Synthetic Biology|Synthetic Biology]] - [[wiki/Real-Time Genetic Repair|Real-Time Genetic Repair]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "First the inevitability: the power of information technologies is doubling each year, and moreover comprises areas beyond computation, most notably our knowledge of biology and of our own intelligence. It took 15 years to sequence HIV and from that perspective the genome project seemed impossible in 1990. But the amount of genetic data we were able to sequence doubled every year while the cost came down by half each year." — Ray Kurzweil, 2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-ray-kurzweil-billions-years-into-decades ```