Robert Barry Ptolemy (born 1969) is an American film director, producer and writer. Ptolemy directed ''

Transcendent Man ''Transcendent Man'' is a 2009 documentary film by American filmmaker Barry Ptolemy about inventor, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil and his predictions about the future of technology in his 2005 book, '' The Singularity is Near''. In the film, ...

'' (2009) a

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

about futurist and inventor

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) 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 e ...

Life

Ptolemy was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

, California. His father introduced him to computers at an early age, giving him a lifelong interest in technology. At the age of 12, Ptolemy worked with Steven Spielberg on the set of '' E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (1982) as an animal wrangler. Inspired by working with Spielberg the next year in 1983 Ptolemy directed and produced his first short film ''The Holograph'' which won first place in a regional arts festival. He attended

USC School of Cinematic Arts The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Sc ...

in 1990 and shortly after started a production company that produced TV commercials and show pilots.

Career

In 2006, Ptolemy read Kurzweil's '' The Singularity Is Near'' and was inspired to make the film, ''Transcendent Man'' in February 2007. Along with his wife Felicia, Ptolemy followed Kurzweil around the world to roughly 25 cities in five countries while documenting his ideas about the concept of the singularity. After working closely together, Ptolemy considers Kurzweil a friend. In 2010, Ptolemy directed the "We Are The World for Haiti" video which premiered during the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics with Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie. In an interview with ''High School Rejects'', Ptolemy said his next project would be a science fiction film. As of this writing Ptolemy is scheduled to produce and appear in a panel discussion called Transcendent Man LIVE with

, Steve Wozniak, Deepak Chopra,

Dean Kamen Dean Lawrence Kamen (born April 5, 1951) is an American engineer, inventor, and businessman. He is known for his invention of the Segway and iBOT, as well as founding the non-profit organization FIRST with Woodie Flowers. Kamen holds over 1, ...

Michio Kaku Michio Kaku (, ; born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science ( science communicator). He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kak ...

Tan Le Tan Le ( Vietnamese: ''Lê Thị Thái Tần'', born 20 May 1977), a Vietnamese-Australian telecommunications entrepreneur, is a co-founder of Emotiv. She was named the 1998 Young Australian of the Year. In 2019 Tan Le became a member of Rho Chi ...

with special appearances by Vice President Al Gore, Bill Maher,

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award n ...

and

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...

. The event will be broadcast to 500 theaters nationwide as a Fathom Event live from the Lincoln Center in New York City on August 3, 2011. Ptolemy has been quoted as saying he assembled this panel to "start a grand discussion about the future."

Filmography

*''The Catch'' (2000) – Director/Producer/Screenplay *''

'' (2009) – Director/Producer * Transcendent Man LIVE! (2011) – Executive Producer * The Future of Us – starring Jason Silva (2014) Executive Producer

References

External links

* http://transcendentman.com/ * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ptolemy, Barry 1969 births Living people Writers from Los Angeles American transhumanists Film directors from Los Angeles