On Thursday, May 15, 2014 5:18:15 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: > > On 16 May 2014 08:29, Craig Weinberg <[email protected] <javascript:>>wrote: > >> On Thursday, May 15, 2014 3:55:12 PM UTC-4, JohnM wrote: >> >>> Craig: >>> beautiful reply, appreciate your understanding and explanation. >>> H O W E V E R : >>> if we "MIX" pop culture with more 'thought-of' speculation (language?) >>> we get into trouble soon. Popular meanings are ill-defined and many times >>> loose. >>> I try to verify the exact meanings applies >>> >> >> Craig, my Kraxlwerk (PC) stole the half-baked text and mailed it away. >>> I am thankful: the rest would have been silly, anyway. >>> John >>> >> >> Thanks John, >> >> Yeah, I re-posted that one from by blog so it is more pop-friendly than I >> probably would have made it for this list. Applying 'singularity' to the >> growth of technology is pretty weak, I agree. I guess someone decided it >> needed a super-amazing name. >> > > Vernor Vinge. > > He called it a technological singularity because it makes the future > impossible to predict even in a weak sense. This makes it more like a > technological event horizon than a singularity, assuming it occurs (Max > Tegmark seems to be both worried and hopeful that it will). A singularity > is where something comes to an end, in this case human progress (it ends > because it hits the wall of whatever is actually possible, assuming that is > finite, or if not it ends because it goes to infinity). >
Thanks. Yeah, that makes more sense, and I have heard of Vinge, but it still seems like a term which as a meaning that is more of a metaphor than most people would assume. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
