Live forever? Computer says yes

IT USED to be that you would go into a dark tent where an old woman would gaze into a ball and tell you about the dark handsome stranger in your future. In the 21st century, it seems, the tent is a rather eccentrically decorated office in the suburbs of Boston; the old woman, a professorial chap in a suit; and the handsome stranger, a network of hyper-intelligent computers that will take over the world. It is hard not to think Arnold Schwarzenegger while talking to futurist Ray Kurzweil. This is not because he looks like Arnie (he is pretty much the physical opposite), but because he keeps saying things that sound like the plot of the movie Terminator. Nanobots, self-aware computers and human cyborgs litter his conversations.