An associate in a group that advises our goverment found in her
housecleaning of old printed materials a book in which one of my futurist essays from back in 1971 appeared. I thought it was a neat way to review the subject to see if the future for 2008-2012 I wrote about was close to the real thing.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make when proposing the singularity to
non-techies is to even use the term.
Lets just dumb it down.
No sense getting the fear factor up when the singularity is so weak and
defenceless that popular frankenstein/terminator/day after tomorrow
reactions can jeopardize the entire event horizon.
I think we entered the event horizon the day the DARPANET was switched on
and simply have continued on since.
I really think that Kurzweil and Google to name drop a few of the players
have found shelter in the USA Military Industrial Complex.
It is from here, sheltered from the luddites with access to significant
R&D resources that the singularity will eminate.
For the very reasons you point out, the public is not ready for the singularity
and we don't have the time or resources to waste making them ready
for something we are not even sure the shape of yet.
Perhaps the GMO combination of extreme biological modification
to endure extreme lenths of time in constant battle without loss of
mental functionality and enhancement to incorporate high speed data
managment direct to the cortex from the military internet servers
will not only create a supersoldier, but also
as an accidental side effect, a super long lived post-human.
Yes society would change with the perfection of the supersoldier.
What would a supersoldier be like?????
A person who can work perhaps 100 hours non-stop at full operating
efficiency both mental and physical.
A person able to endure body temperatures from perhaps 40F to 150F
both internal and external.
A person with regenerative and repair capacity manyfold that of their parents.
A person able to withstand biological, chemical and physical agents that would
otherwise kill a traditional human.
A person able to interface with a data stream many times that of what our
5 senses today can deluge us with at once.
The point at which the singularity will occur is when the general population
becomes aware of the existance of posthuman supersoldiers and has to decide if they
want to destroy the technology or use it to enhance their personal lives.
Of course, like with the internet, once the genie is out of the bottle
it cannot be quashed without extraordinary effort.
I think one has to simply move along and make it happen.
And of course sell the technology spin-offs to pay for the R& D expenditures.
......................
On 9/25/06, Bruce LaDuke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I really like Shane's observation below that people just don't think
Singularity is coming for a very long time. The beginning affects are
already here. Related to this, I've got a few additional thoughts to share.
We're not looking into singularity yet, but the convergence has already
started. Consider that the molecular economy has the potential to bring
total social upheaval in its own right, without singularity. For example,
what happens when an automobile is weighs around 400 pounds and is powered
by a battery that never needs charging. What happens to the oil industry?
What happens to politics because of what happens to the oil industry? How
will a space elevator by 2012 change the balance of power? Nanoweapons?
World War III? China/India industrialization and resulting pollution? As
announced recently what happens when the world warms to its hottest level in
a million years? When biodiversity reduction goes critical and plankton die
and oxygen fails?
I'm sure you know about most of these things and how quickly they are
moving, but my point is, trouble isn't coming...it's here. Not only should
we be thinking about these things now, but I think it is our social
responsibility. That is, if we want children to grow up and inhabit this
world with any level of normalcy...or at all.
Any number of things could bring our glorious house crashing down in a
matter of days or months. When the Soviet economy crashed, nuclear
physicists were standing in the soup line over night. The same could easily
be seen of us in a global economic crash. Our scholarly/industrial
existence is really very fragile. It doesn't take much for our hierarchy of
needs to return to survival.
Our human track record of late in terms of creating advance is really quite
good, but in terms of dealing with the social impacts of that advance is
really very, very poor and immature. All of our wonderful creations are
already making quite a big global mess. So who's to say that our continued
focus on modernist, profit-centric values will result in any thing less than
more and more advance alongside escalating social issues?
In my mind, singularity is no different. I pesonally see it providing just
another tool in the hand of mankind, only one of greater power. And this
power holds the potential to fulfill human values and human intention, which
is the piece we really aren't managing well. Bad intentions and bad values,
combined with a bigger tool, equals bigger trouble.
Given our human track record and factors already outside of our control, we
have a far better chance of destroying what we have now (the rest of the
way) than we have of realizing singularity. Not that we shouldn't continue
to seek singularity, but we need a hard look at the values and intentions
than we're basing these efforts on.
See the Second Enlightenment Conference: http://www.2enlightenment.com
Elizabet Sahtouris will be keynote (http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/)
Kind Regards,
Bruce LaDuke
Managing Director
Instant Innovation, LLC
Indianapolis, IN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.hyperadvance.com
----Original Message Follows----
From: "Shane Legg" < [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [singularity] Convincing non-techie skeptics that the
Singularity isn't total bunk
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 23:16:12 +0200
I'd suggest looking at Joy's "Why the future doesn't need us" article in
Wired.
For some reason, which isn't clear to me, that article was a huge hit,
drawing
in people that normally would never read such stuff. I was surprised when
various educated but non-techie people I know started asking me about it.
I think the major problem is one of time scale. Due to Hollywood everybody
is familiar with the idea of the future containing super powerful
intelligent (and
usually evil) computers. So I think the basic concept that these things
could
happen in the future is already out there in the popular culture. I think
the key
thing is that most people, both Joe six pack and almost all professors I
know,
don't think it's going to happen for a really long time --- long enough that
it's
not going to affect their lives, or the lives of anybody they know. As such
they
aren't all that worried about it. Anyway, I don't think the idea is going
to be
taken seriously until something happens that really gives the public a
fright.
Shane
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