With or without LENR (hopefully with) "The Singularity Is Near"....
"Near" being the operative variable to be concerned about today as it is
the Ides of March.
The date when "Humans Transcend Biology" was a 2006 non-fiction book
about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and
futurist Ray Kurzweil. It has evolved several times with input from many
others into a coherent vision of things to come - and embraced by almost
all of the great minds in Technology and Futurism. At the same time,
this vision has been marginalized from the pulpit by almost all
religious leaders who see it as heresy. Yet, ironically, the inevitable
result of Transhumanism can be seen as the actual fulfillment of ancient
prophecy... in a way scarcely imaginable to those "left-behind." History
is written by the survivors.
The Singularity is more than the "Age of Intelligent Machines," or even
the "Age of Spiritual Machines" the time when we invent a viable
deity-substitute, the iGod of technology. The full concept predicts that
that inevitable trends in all branches of high-tech like AI and genetic
engineering and even alternative energy (according to the Anthropocene
Institute) will merge together into a synergistic paradigm shift, each
reinforcing the others shared vision. It is as if this merger were being
"directed" from afar .... a double irony.
Following the paradigm shift which is the Singularity, most of humanity
will effectively become 2nd class citizens, so to speak or else "absent"
in some way. There could be a new mythology which is put in place to
prevent the mass of humanity from fully appreciating their predicament
and revolting against an invisible enemy. This has been dramatized in
film, and will continue to be the subject of debate as to who is really
being left-behind and who gets the ticket to Elysium.
But the die is cast, and a mass catastrophe like a genetically
engineered plague, is not ruled out. The bottom line is that within a
short time, the onslaught of Evolution will have presented Earth with
more than a new elite - it will be a new dominant species - part
biological and part manufactured, Brave New World meets Asimov's Robot
series (he did not go far enough).
That future date for the Singularity has been moving target, but was
updated today to be the year 2029, or 12 years from now.
Personally, I'd welcome the change, but the date is a bit too far out
there to make a reservation. As MLK would say ..... /I may not get there
with you/, but I've been to the mountaintop...
- [Vo]:12 years from now Jones Beene
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