However, our species is incredibly poor at intuitively understanding exponential trends. Kurzweil's essential point is that our gut-feeling predictions of the future will be off substantially. Specifically, our intuitive sense of future progress significantly underestimates actual progress and the gap systematically widens as time progresses.
Neither you or I could have intuitively predicted twenty years ago the level of today's technological advancement. And we'd be even more wrong in the predicting the next twenty.
It's far too easy to dismiss Kurzweil's work as that of a superficial nutjob who wants to "sell more books and speaking engagements." Kuzweil's crunched the numbers. While he might not be right on everything, his predictions are based on data, but yours are based on human intuition that has historically been wrong.
I would be very careful of the knee-jerk reaction you display to Kurzweil's work. Keep in mind we are cognitively disabled at intuitively predicting exponential progress.