SOME GOOD/BAD NEWS FROM THE FUTURE

A commercial break from all the blood and gore for a bit of sci-fi rhapsodizing. My article about The Singularity came out on GMANEWS.TV a couple of days ago. And the Transhumanists actually wrote me back a thanks letter. Much appreciated, too, Mr Tom McCabe.

Below are excerpts. Or you can go read the whole thing right away HERE.

In the future, there will be robots. And that future 

 will happen less than 40 years from now.  

Transcending the flesh: 

The coming Singularity

 

In the future, there will be robots. And that future will happen less than 40 years from now. If you believe that humans and machines will eventually become one, then the Singularity movement is for you. 

What is The Singularity? It is that point in time when humanity’s technological capacity so outstrips itself that a moment of near apotheosis for the race takes place. This means many things, but chief among them are: a) technology will become so small and cheap that body augmentation (through nanobots) will become as routine as an injection’ and b) we will give birth to machine artificial intelligence (AI) so smart it surpasses all the smart human brains of the world put together. 

Ray Kuzweil’s book The Singularity is Near (When Humans Transcend Biology) defines it thus: “The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality."

If you experience a profound feeling of terror and shock at having grasped the full meaning of that statement, please don’t be alarmed. It’s a sane and valid reaction.

It’s pretty easy to dismiss the concepts and predictions of those who believe in the coming Singularity (they call themselves Singularitarians or Transhumanists —or even Post-Humanists) as wish fulfillment of futurists and tech-fetishists. Mad ravings, even.

Read the rest HERE.