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IEEE Special Report On the Singularity
jbcarr83 writes "The IEEE Spectrum is running a special issue on the technological singularity as envisioned by Vernor Vinge and others. Articles on both sides of the will it/won't it divide appear, though most take the it will approach. I found Richard A.L. Jones' contribution, 'Rupturing The Nanotech Rapture,' to be of particular interest. He puts forward some very sound objections to nanomachines of the Drexler variety."
Mankind has been progressing technologically in steps that seem to get closer and closer together. The theory is that at some point, technological advances will begin to happen all at once, with the emergence of things like sentient AI and usable quantum engineering. Basically, technological transcendence.
It's a pretty silly idea, but everyone has their own vision of nirvana.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
http://www.simulation-argument.com/classic.html That's what you're thinking of. And honestly, it does make some sense, but I'm not sure if replacing God with unbounded recursion is much more pleasing.
IIRC the term singularity can refer to anyplace that predictive systems appear break down.
I was listening to a talk on hypercanes quite some time ago, and the lecturer was using the term singularity to describe the point beyond which the weather system became self-sustaining, a situation for which the predictive equations could not account. Once the predictive systems are expanded the 'singularity' is 'pushed back' to the point where the systems break down again.
Look it up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity It's the point where machines will be able to evolve technology faster than human thinking can. So, it's the point where we are no longer the most significant sentient race on this planet.
There's a reason it's also called the Rapture of the Nerds :)
Minor nitpick: Futurists make a distinction between "strongly" and "weakly" Godlike AI. Strongly Godlike AI refers to an intelligence that is for all meaningful purposes God - effectively unbounded control over space and time. Weakly Godlike AI refers to a being that intellectually transcends us in ways we can't imagine, but is still bound by the laws of the universe. Most talk about the Singularity focuses on a weakly Godlike scenario.
Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Singularity Is Near (the only book I've read on the topic), sets the date for around 2045. He makes further predictions for things before that; here's a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil#Future_Predictions
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
I am reminded of an article published in Analog around 1970 showing the exponential curve of the speed of human travel. It plotted very nicely: horse, locomotive, aeroplane, rocket. At the time human speed had recently hit a new high: the Apollo moon missions with humans traveling at 11.09 km/sec (Apollo 10 in 1969 was the fastest). The author projected we would be traveling close to the speed of light and be prepared to colonize the galaxy before 2000.
Almost 40 years later the fastest any human has ever travelled is (drum roll) 11.09 km/sec on Apollo 10. It looks like, with luck, humans may again travel about as fast in another 20 years.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The term "singularity" for the center bit of a black hole was stolen from the existing definition of "the point at which the model fails", because it was the point at which the model fails. The usage in TFA is proper.
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