The Speculist

The Everyday Singularity

KurzweilAI has this definition of the technological Singularity -

Defined by Vernor Vinge as the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered by nanotechnology, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived. The Singularity is a common matter of discussion in transhumanist circles. There is no concise definition, but usually the Singularity is meant as a future time when societal, scientific and economic change is so fast we cannot even imagine what will happen from our present perspective, and when humanity will become posthumanity. Another definition is the singular time when technological development will be at its fastest.

The singularity is that point in the future at which our ability to forecast today fails us completely. This will not be a sudden failure, but an increasing failure as we approach the singularity. We are already in the fog.

Since Internet use became widespread about ten years ago, our ability to predict the future impact of any new development began to fail. Napster, Kazaa, Google, Voice Over IP – few could predict these things or their impact in 1992. Flexibility has become the most important trait in business. Since we can't know what's going to happen next, we'd better be quick and nimble when it does.

No one has any experience knowing what twenty years of wide-spread Internet use will do. No one can say what will happen when all scientific researchers have, in effect, a supercomputer on their desktop.

And so we have highly intelligent well-educated people making wildly divergent forecasts from other highly intelligent well-educated people – and this is for the next ten years.

Kurzweil and others have explained that the singularity will occur when greater than human intelligence becomes a reality. But aren't we as a practical matter in some ways smarter because we have the Internet than we were ten years ago without it? Our ability to process information is the same, but our ability to access information and communicate it to others has vastly improved.

It's hard to catch yourself in the process of having a thought because so much processing is occurring in parallel – most of which is below the threshold of consciousness. Now it's hard to catch the direction of society for the same reason. So many things are happening in parallel that it is impossible to predict how possible development A will impact possible development B and so on.

We are in the "knee of the curve." Our best bet is to get educated, stay current, and be flexible.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at February 25, 2004 10:24 AM | TrackBack