Eh, I'd tend to agree with you in general, and that was probably the weaker of my arguments, but the recipient list is pretty impressive: Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, David Packard, etc:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Technology

It's definitely not a Cracker Jack prize.

He's also racked up a pretty impressive list of Inventor of the Year and Lifetime Achievement awards from more technically astute sources like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, etc.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_kurzweil - under Recognition and awards

I guess the main point I was trying to make is that he's definitely not this dilettante interloper that some of the more off-base commenters are alleging here.