An American inventor who plans to live for ever has been appointed head of a new school for future entrepreneurs backed by Google and the US space agency, Nasa.Ray Kurzweil, who worked as a computer scientist before turning to future-gazing in the late 1980s, will become chancellor of the Singularity University, based at Nasa's Silicon Valley campus in California.The institution gains its name from a controversial 2005 book by Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near. In it, he argues that the exponential advance of technology will transform society by giving rise to computers that are more intelligent than humans. The leap in computing power will drive rapid advances in other fields, he claims, that together could solve the problems of climate change, poverty, famine and disease.In an earlier book, Kurzweil predicts the creation of "nanobots" that will patrol our bloodstreams, repairing wear and tear as they go, and keeping our bodies perpetually young. "The law of accelerating returns mean...