The Singularity

The Singularity is the point at which humans and machines become one. And that point is near, according to Ray Kurzweil anyway (2045 to be exact.) His book describes

"... an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will."

It's not a new idea. I recall that Alvin Toffler posited something similar, based on the exponential growth of information. When information is doubling at the rate of a millisecond or so, then something intense will happen to human evolution. What that may be is clearly open to huge amounts of conjecture (Robert Anton Wilson would probably call it the Eighth Trigger.)

Whatever, I'd like to see someone try to put together some use cases for it.

Posted by monoman at 02:22 PM on September 19, 2005