Posted by paul2ed on June 6th, 2009
Posted by paul2ed on June 5th, 2009
The Singularity causes scientific advancements that occur so quickly, people can’t even perceive the significance or enormity of changes happening right in front of them.
Posted by paul2ed on April 21st, 2009
In the year 2042, nanobots will be swimming in our bloodstreams, making us effectively cyborgs. We will be able to learn and remember more information that we can imagine, eat whatever we want without gaining weight, shape-shift into many different physical forms, live disease-free, and die and be reborn whenever we want. This is the promise of the Singularity - an event in the not to distant future when our technology gives us the power of Greek Gods with the emergence and marriage of genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Computers will be able to write their own software and create hardware that will boggle our minds. This paradigm shift will see the beginning of Robo Sapiens, mankind and technology merging into superior beings. (You heard it here first.)
These beautiful dreams of the future are ultimately built on the law of accelerating returns, imagined by Ray Kurzweil, that states the technology has been developing exponentially for a long time. Nerds are fascinated by this theory for many years now. Technological prowess creating ever increasing levels of technological advancement, doubling in shorter and shorter time frames is so exciting that it’s not just for science classes anymore. Kurzweil says we are on the verge of a rate of progress that it will “appear to rupture the fabric of human history.” We will triumph over the forces of nature and chart the course of our own evolution.
Do you realize how much technology has changed in just the last 4 years? Twitter, iPhones, Facebook? These things will seem like crap compared to what we will be using in the next 4 years. Technological advancement is moving faster all the time. We will be soon living in a future that makes Minority Report look like 10,000 B.C.
Posted by paul2ed on March 18th, 2009
By some irritating coincidence, three people asked me the same question today: “What is the Singularity?”
Simply put, the Singularity is a future period in which technological progress becomes so rapid that it radically transforms humankind.
Blah, blah, blah – words. Let’s explain this in terms of movies. There are three sci-fi movies about the Singularity that you have already seen: Lawnmower Man, The Terminator movies, and the Matrix films.
To refresh, in Lawnmower Man, a scientist utilizes cognitive enhancement drugs and virtual reality education to augment the intelligence of a mentally challenged man. Eventually the test subject transfers his consciousness into the virtual world. Three common singularity ideas: 1. We will develop drugs to make us smarter. 2. Computerized education can increase intellectual capabilities. 3. We will eventually be able to upload our consciousness into a computerized environment.
The Matrix supposes a post-singularity earth where things did not turn out well, to say the least. Advancements in computer technology and artificial intelligence develop into a world where humans live in a simulated environment controlled by a combination of self-aware software “agents” and conscious machines that harvest the energy of human bodies. Three additional singularity concepts: 1. Software could become self-aware. 2. Computer intelligence could exceed human intelligence. 3. Enough computing power could completely simulate what we consider to be the “real” world.
The Terminator movies and TV shows present another bleak view of accelerating technological progress. When Skynet, a network of computers becomes (marginally) self-aware , it utilizes its military connections to declare war on the human race and start a fairly one-sided nuclear war (Judgment Day). It is unclear whether actual artificial intelligence has been achieved, but technology in this sci-fi series has certainly gotten out of hand. Three more Singularity oriented concepts: 1. Computer intelligence will become similar to biological intelligence with similar motivations (fear, self-preservation). 2. Networks provide a higher order platform of potential artificial intelligence. 3. Networks of computers will eventually be designing new, faster, more complex, and better computers than those designed by humans.
Movies are made to make money. Money is made by giving the audience an emotional experience. Fear is the easiest emotion to create. All of these movies portray a dystopian future, created by the accelerating technological change obtained by intelligence increasing capabilities of positive feedback loops created by networking more, faster and better computers.
So where does that leave us? Why am I so excited about the next 20 years of unprecedented levels of smaller, faster, more networked and cheaper computing?
Stay tuned.
Posted by paul2ed on March 14th, 2009
Create More You inhabit the Reality you Create
Health – 4 hours of Yoga per day WEEK (month?)
1) What Do You Want? Write It Down!
I will live Forever oR Die Trying!
Whatever You Resist will Persist.
Reddit – Technoptimism or, How I stopped worrying and learned to Love The singularity
Life is a classroom that never ends – Russ Dalbey.
Become the best version of yourself possible.
70 * 360 = 4200 + 21000 = 25000 days
Challenge Yourself.
Imagine the Possibilities Creative Intelligence
An Awesome Magical Purposeful Life
*Focus on what You Want.
Life will challenge you.
Be grateful for what you’ve got.
Be the best you can be every day.
Not only do I believe in the Singularity, I think it’s happening right now.
I’ve always heard the singularity defined as the point at which technological advancements occur so quickly no one can imagine the outcome. By that definition I do believe we’ve been in the singularity since about 2000 or 2001, whenever broadband Internet became widespread.
If you define the singularity as the time after super-intelligence I think it still applies. If super-intelligence is an intelligence greater than one human, any online community would qualify. Software like Reddit and the forthcoming Google Wave bring super-human intelligence to new levels.
Take a look at what has happened over the last few years. I think the Ron Paul presidential campaign and the Campaign for Liberty are perfect examples of the unimagionable things that are beginning to occur. For example, raising 6 million dollars in a single day without centralized planning, creating an advertising company and funding it with half a million dollars to create and fly the Ron Paul Blimp, then there’s HR1207…all decentralized events coordinated by software implemented super-human-intelligence.
I do believe we are on track to experience the hard take off in the next few years as people really begin to imagine new ways of using the Internet.
The 2012 presidential race will likely catalyze the widespread adoption of a new culture of mass collaboration.
Mass collaboration will bring new institutions into being. I imagine business like Walmart or Target being bought by online communities, coordinated buyouts by shareholders with an agenda. Just like people used the Internet to organize political campaigns, they’ll do the same thing for business. Software will replace bloated corporate structures, and likewise bloated government beuarocracies.
Communities will fund the creation open source hardware and businesses to manufacture it. Imagine an open source printer with ink cartridges that cost $4.
Many business charge so much more for their products than the actual labor that went into making them. They spend that money paying exorbitant salaries to people who don’t really do anything, or at least nothing a community couldn’t do for free. They spend it on marketing, something online communities do naturally… by default.
Consider money as electricity. Using the Internet, communities, cities, states, nations, will design the circuits which run our world.
The prosperity which this new culture will bring will unite the world. The huge defense budgets will be a thing of the past. Their arduous and undue burden will be lifted from society.
I believe we are part of the Universe. I believe that we are destined to spread to the stars and galaxies. I believe that without the culture which I have described we are destined to destroy ourselves.
I believe nature provided us religions so we could learn faith. I have faith in this.