Live forever coming soon says Ray Kurzweil...are we already in the Singularity?
By Tom Foremski - July 11, 2007
The Singularity is coming--Ray shows his graphs (10.05)
I caught Ray Kurzweil's lecture recently, which had many provocative ideas and many many very similar graphs--all steeply angled upwards.
The man takes 225 micronutrient pills per day, according to the introduction by Stewart Brand, the legendary media innovator and community builder (The Well, Whole Earth Catalog, etc).
I got to see Mr Kurzweil take a break from ingesting micro-nutrients and give a lecture on on the coming "Singularity," detailed in his latest book.
The Singularity is an event about 15 years away, that will meld our biology with our technology.
It is the collision of many trends that are expanding on a logarithmic scale and they all meet at the same point. Ray has many graphs that prove it--in fact, they all look the same. And by the way, these are logarithmic graphs that means we are heading into a red-shift accelerated tsunami of technology/biology mastery.
The Singularity will offer us mastery over our biology and our life span. Ray's ruler says we are 15 or so years away from the Singularity.
In fact, he says that if we can bumble through the next ten years without encountering our mortal nature, then we'll probably make it to the Singularity. And live forever.
In this near future world our ability to create virtual worlds will make the digital and analog worlds indistinguishable. It'll be like the Matrix (except Ray doesn't use the term.)
He described a future world that readers of Stanislaw Lem have known for decades. And Lem has already mapped out a lot of the philosophical, moral, ethical and comic dilemmas that such a future will bring. (Cyberiad is an excellent primer on Lem if you are curious.)
Lem might say: If we are so close to the Singularity, just 15 years or so away, then it is highly likely that we are already in the Singularity. That's what I would say too.
Does that change anything? Probably not. We are still bound by the rules of this world, whatever its source. But it is interesting nonetheless.
Posted by Tom Foremski on October 14, 2005
(I'm republishing some prior posts as summer essays...)
Also please see:
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Comments (8)
I fully agree with your insightful perspective, actually there is a similar thread at Frontier Blog
( http://www.hwswworld.com/wp )
Posted: July 13, 2007 12:07 AM
I think it's an amazing time, the only thing that's holding the human race back is lawyers and patent law.
You've only to browse newscientist, or physorg, to realise that there is a constant stream of developments, and with ideas spreading through the net, breeding new avenues of thought-the pace is fantastic!
Posted: July 17, 2007 3:53 PM
Don't forget to tack on "..if you can afford it".
Posted: July 17, 2007 7:10 PM
Ben: If we are already in the singularity then we can all afford it :-)
Posted: July 17, 2007 10:41 PM
Technical and biological mastery...
You're kidding me right. Ok-ok. Some of my co-workers have mastered bitTorrent - but they use it to download soaps and cheap science fiction.
We're a long way from mastery of technology, biology, and even.. grammar.
Posted: July 18, 2007 1:28 AM
We might have more trouble with grammar than with technology :-)
If you look at progress in the sciences, and get a ruler, you will see a mashup happening in the 12 to 15 year range...
Posted: July 18, 2007 9:22 AM
yes, i do hope your envisions are true, but i cannot help asking how? if the scientists who work on these projects see no such bright future than how can we assume the good without proof, although if you have proof can you send it to my email, can i do anything to help with the future?
Posted: July 19, 2007 11:51 AM
Alex, yes you can help with the future, and you can change the future.
Posted: July 19, 2007 5:55 PM