Raymond Kurzweil is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health technology, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on the Winnie-the-Pooh books by authors A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard, The New Adventures was the first time a major Disney character headlined an animated, made-for-television series as well as the first Disney television series based on a major animated film. The cartoon premiered with a limited run on The Disney Channel on January 17, 1988. Nine months later, the show moved to ABC as part of their Saturday morning lineup. New episodes continued until October 26, 1991. Proving popular with children and older fans, it remained a staple on television in the United States for nearly two decades.
James Mackenzie Fallows is an American writer and journalist. He is a former national correspondent for The Atlantic. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a former editor of U.S. News & World Report, and as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter for two years was the youngest person ever to hold that job.
Michael Madsen is an American actor. Alongside his frequent collaborations with Quentin Tarantino—Reservoir Dogs (1992), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)—he is known for his appearances in films such as The Natural (1984), The Doors (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), Free Willy (1993), Species (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), Die Another Day (2002), Sin City (2005), and Scary Movie 4 (2006). He has played voice roles in various video games, including Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Narc (2005), the Dishonored series (2012–2017), and Crime Boss: Rockay City (2023). Madsen has five children, including actor Christian Madsen.
Glen Keane is an American animator, director, author and illustrator. As a character animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios for 38 years (1974–2012), he worked on feature films including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan and Tangled. He received the 1992 Annie Award for character animation and the 2007 Winsor McCay Award for lifetime contribution to the field of animation. He was named a Disney Legend in 2013, a year after retiring from the studio.
James Brendan Patterson is an American author. Among his works are the Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch & Wizard, Private and Middle School series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction, and romance novels. Patterson's books have sold more than 425 million copies, and he was the first person to sell one million e-books. In 2016, Patterson topped Forbes's list of highest-paid authors for the third consecutive year, with an income of $95 million. His total income over a decade is estimated at $700 million.
L. John Doerr is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in trying to fix America's economic downturn. Forbes ranked Doerr as the 40th richest person in tech in 2017 and, as of 1 August, 2023, as the 146th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$11.9 billion. Doerr is the author of Measure What Matters, a book about goal-setting, and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.
Jim Krueger is an American comic book writer, novelist, and filmmaker.
The Ultimate Gift is a 2006 American drama film directed by Michael O. Sajbel from a screenplay written by Cheryl McKay, which is based on the best selling novel by Jim Stovall, who cameos in the film. It stars Drew Fuller, Bill Cobbs, Lee Meriwether, Ali Hillis, Abigail Breslin, Brian Dennehy, and James Garner in his final live action film appearance before his death in 2014. It was released on March 9, 2007 in the United States and Canada.
The Railway Children is a 1970 British family drama film based on the 1906 novel of the same name by E. Nesbit. The film was directed by Lionel Jeffries and stars Dinah Sheridan, Jenny Agutter, Sally Thomsett, Gary Warren and Bernard Cribbins in leading roles. The film was released to cinemas in the United Kingdom on 21 December 1970.
Rawson Law Stovall is an American video game designer and producer. He started out as a video game journalist, the first to be nationally syndicated in the United States. In 1982, ten-year-old Stovall's first column appeared in the Abilene Reporter-News, his local newspaper. He got the column in ten publications before Universal Press Syndicate started distributing it in April 1983; by 1984, the column, titled "The Vid Kid", appeared in over twenty-four newspapers. After being reported on by The New York Times, Stovall was featured on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and earned a regular spot on Discovery Channel's The New Tech Times. In 1985, he helped introduce the Nintendo Entertainment System at its North American launch.
James Crace is an English novelist, playwright and short story writer. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999, Crace was born in Hertfordshire and has lectured at the University of Texas at Austin. His novels have been translated into 28 languages—including Norwegian, Japanese, Portuguese and Hebrew.
Ben 10 is an American media franchise conceived by Man of Action, produced by Cartoon Network Studios, and owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment. The franchise revolves around a young boy named Ben Tennyson, who discovers the Omnitrix — a high-tech, extraterrestrial device shaped like a wristwatch. This remarkable gadget contains the DNA of various alien species, allowing Ben to transform into them at will. Initially, the Omnitrix features ten alien transformations, but over time, Ben gains the ability to unlock additional species.
Assouline Publishing is a book publisher and luxury lifestyle company founded in 1994 by Prosper and Martine Assouline. It has published more than 1,700 titles on subjects including architecture, art, design, fashion, gastronomy, lifestyle, photography, and travel. Beginning in the 2010s the company has branched out to designing, producing, and selling furniture, accessories, and luxury gifts, and to creating bespoke furnished and accessorized libraries for individuals and hotels.
Narrative Television Network (NTN) makes movies, television shows and educational programming accessible to millions of blind and visually impaired people and their families. Founded in 1988 by Jim Stovall, the Narrative Television Network unobtrusively adds the voice of a narrator to the existing program between the dialogue so that blind or low vision people can hear what they can't see. The Narrative Television Network has received an Emmy Award, a Media Access Award and an International Film and Video Award for its pioneering work in making movies, television and educational programming accessible for the visually impaired. The Narrative Television Network website offers readers a “Text Only” version of its pages to increase accessibility for blind and visually impaired readers who use screen readers.
Chude Jideonwo is a Nigerian TV host, filmmaker and media entrepreneur.
Marques Keith Brownlee, also known professionally as MKBHD, is an American YouTuber and professional ultimate player, best known for his technology-focused videos as well as his podcast Waveform. As of December 2023, he has more than 20 million subscribers across all channels and 3.93 billion total video views. Vic Gundotra, a former senior vice president of Google, called Brownlee "the best technology reviewer on the planet right now". At the 10th Shorty Awards in 2019, he was named "Creator of the Decade" The former name of his YouTube channel is a concatenation of MKB and HD. With New York PoNY, he is the 2022 WFDF World Champion in the Open Category for ultimate Frisbee.
Niranjan Pranshankar Pandya is an Indian blind social worker and the secretary of Poona Blind Mens' Association, a non governmental organization working for the cause of visually impaired people of Pune and neighbouring areas. He was honored by the Government of India, in 2012, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Gullapalli Nageswara Rao is an Indian ophthalmologist, the chairman of the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis (AOI) and the founder of the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. A former associate professor at the School of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Rochester, Rao is a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India. He was honored by the Government of India, in 2002, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri. He was elected in 2017 to the Ophthalmology Hall of Fame instituted by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.
